Below is a sampling of poetry I've written. Don't freak. There aren't many, they're mostly short, and I guarantee there's nothing here that's out-and-out stupid. All the poems appear on this page, but you can jump to one or another by clicking on the title list below. I should say that I'm not a big fan of poetry. I find little of interest or personal relevance in most poems, save those written by people I know. I don't write much poetry either (the following is probably about a third of all the poems I've ever written), except when I find that I've got something to express that wouldn't work in any other way. My favorite poems by someone I don't know would probably be "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Wasteland," both by T.S. Eliot. Most Lifeless Time (1991) Stream-of-consciousness self-loathing. Since I Found Out (#1) (1993) My reaction to something I'm not at liberty to discuss. Since I Found Out (#2) (1994) I thought I'd lost the above poem, and tried to write it again from memory. It ended up mutating into something else, and specifically ended up being my reaction to learning that I was molested as a child. [NEW/OLD] Function of Space (1994) I wrote this during a summer trip to England and Germany, and forgot about it until I stumbled across it in an old notebook. I've got no idea what this was about or in what circumstances I wrote it. Black Lights (1994) Written after a weekend with a female friend who, as you'll see, did not leave entirely happy. Gasworks (1995) A poem written on the cusp of a new relationship, about our first day together. The Beast (1995) A poem written after that new relationship was ended when she broke up with me. Fellatio (1997) A friend challenged me to write a poem about hot tubs for reasons I've already forgotten. This little gem was the result. The Word From Beyond (1997) I was invited to contribute an original poem to a Cthulhu Mythos web site. This is the result, a little ditty incorporating inspirations from Eliot's The Waste Land as well as elements of a roleplaying game book I worked on called The Golden Dawn. Trouble Girl (1997) This poem is classical in origin, which means my girlfriend dumped me and I got drunk and wrote it. I've performed this piece a couple times at open-mike poetry events, which I've enjoyed. God knows how the audiences felt. Most Lifeless Time©1991 John TynesI'm alive with anger, eye-piercing clothes hanger and I know what it is to make love with danger but I run just the same and escape the frame and there's chaos and sparks and another damn game but you're there at the end wrapped up in sin so there's a tick on the clock that's beating within and it passes me by and I cry and I try and nothing at all will help me to fly when there's nothing more here nothing held dear and I end my life and I end the fear Since I Found Out (#1)©1993 John TynesSince I found out I feel a secret anger I have a righteous responsibility To not let the jokes slide off To not let careless comments go unchecked To not let down my guard Since I found out I want to tell everyone It's a secret that invites communion Begs to be spread So he won't sleep easy again So he won't get away with it again Since I found out I think of knights in armor Tilting at windmills It's one more on the stack But it's mine And I just found out Since I Found Out (#2)©1994 John TynesSince I found out I feel an obligation To tilt at windmills To never let a comment pass unchecked Since I found out I keep up my guard To hide what harms To help what heals Since I found out I twist and shake Confused and smiling Scared and aware It's been here for ages A moment once frozen, now revealed In the thawing spring of memory But I just found out. Function of Space©1994 John TynesGo Go Go Room to Room Door to Door Slice up life into pieces of me Slice up life before others see Open one, close another who are you here? Beg forgiveness from the next one down Make it whole at your peril Next best thing gets worse as you go down Flatten as you go up Learn the measure of yourself one paced-off zone at a time All the houses you are Are places you've been or to go Knock once, knock twice This is your paradise Voyeur scope at a window See reflection, see you See through, still who? Life is a neighborhood, personality a street Effluvia through chimneys, hearts in phones Cancer of the mindset as ideas decay Believe in you and your swift, sure strength Believe that you hold the capacity to create You are not dead you are not gone Kept the beat kept it strong Stanza chorus rhyme meter Raise the glass for something sweeter Put her in a pumpkin shell And there he kept her, very well Black Lights©1994 John TynesHer face in the purple glow when I kissed her, pulled back, lids heavy lips parted she would breathe, once open her eyes in the hopes of possibility but find only me. "I know," she said, "you don't feel what I feel when we kiss." I looked inside myself felt around my dusty corners rummaged through trunks of unused, withered emotions hoping for possibility finding bare compassion or charity or simple friendship but nothing more. "It could all be so right," I said to myself, "I could hold her all night." I did anyway. Warmth in the narrow bed too short for either of us. Her body full of energy and passion at my touch a bare touch she went over and over and over til she was shaking looked in my face some mute supplicant biting back words in the purple light. "Sometimes I say things in my sleep," she was saying, "even hold entire conversations I won't recall in the morning." Her words sounded like a precaution. I knew what they led to. Sure enough, late in the night I heard her speak. "I love you," she said. "I know," I told her, and held her close. "I understand." Thinking of one I told of my love who could not return it these three years gone by (I still ache for her, talk gladly by phone, it lets me pretend.) She left calmly, happily, not a scene. Said she hoped to return, I said the same, truthfully, but it wasn't the same. "How could you want a troglodyte like me," she'd said. I hated hearing that. She was beautiful, pale as the moon, a creature of autumn and bonfires before old gods. I told her how beautiful she was. She was skeptical, insecure, self-conscious. It hurt me to see her so, in the place where once I'd been and visited still, at times. It hurt me that I could not, did not, love her, for fear it would keep her in that low place. "I love you," she'd said. I wanted to cry. No tears came. Gasworks©1995 John TynesThere's graffitti all around in your life and mine twitchy fingers on the buttons of aerosol expression. Tell me who you are. There's a world that frames your head and stretches into the sky as big as blue outdoors as small as sparrows. Tell me who am I. There's a secret in the air a wish that wants to be free amid talk of life and work and the regrets of words unsaid. Tell me who we can be. There's a thought in my head that makes me wiggle my ears and take your hand in mine and stare into the clouds. Tell me you care about me. Let me take you in my arms Let me show you what happiness means to me Let me make you a picnic Let me kiss you by the sea And tomorrow and the next and all the days to come will be defined by the space of our lives. And all the words in the dictionary will be defined by what you mean to me. The Beast©1995 John TynesI built a castle by the sea asked you to come and play with me the tide rushed in and took the sand pulled from mine your sweet calm hand the beast is huge post-passing of white man's train rifle shots echo in the summer sky I never got to kiss you good-bye the beast is dead I held your hand like I knew I should I thought, "It could be thirty years from now, and I wouldn't even wonder how." the beast is mourned but its ghost haunted your house and cried you shot another and redeemed the first the second lived apart and had it worse the beast is gone what we could have had came too late that was the beast: the second you slew was the years to come for me and you the beast is done asked you to come and play with me the tide rushed in and took the sand it was the beast you could not understand Fellatio©1997 John TynesHirsute Norwegian-American travels on business Beer is strange, foreign tongue stifles glibness In Kyoto the hot tubs are the size of apron strings Resented, cut loose, forgotten like wedding rings Specialty of the house: anime-girls with too-big eyes Surgically altered to please American guys The Word From Beyond©1997 John TynesThe first incantation is the last of the twelve syllables from the secret name of S'lothotta. It is to be spoken in times of great stress and only in a moment of purest clarity. Ranging beyond the doorway, it is possible for the Adept to grasp the fragments of S'lothotta's carapace as it crumbles into a thousand concepts. Embrace your last and worst effort, conceived as it was in the midst of futility and subornment. In Montessori they ride the sled down the hill enveloped in red you swore to me she never said "Come, Arthur, take me to bed." Within the trunk of the world-tree nibbles the mandibles of S'lothotta. Draw them close to you, breathe in their acidic aroma, allow the jelly of your eyes to be drawn out piecemeal by those who wish you well for they will use the tenderest instruments. Young Aleister knew the rest spun chi up his spine and lodged it in his chest "Wishing you all the best." The mind is a vat of compression and digression, pulsing ever, pushing always. It is fervid, fungal, fertile. S'lothotta compresses the space between forebrain and hindbrain; yet it is Shub-Niggurath who rides the synapses 'twixt. Within Oakwood the goddess spoke in Constantine's but a flaccid joke Sheela-na-gig's coming fast yet "Got a fiver I'm broke?" Sheela-na-gig was worshipped of old, is worshipped today, will be worshipped again. The arched vulva offers comfort to those who probe its depths, accept its warmths. Drink deeply from the cup; yet beware the red tide. Contraction and reaction the day is done your blood was not the only one spilled by the shell from the gun encrusted by the heat of the sun Trouble Girl©1997 John TynesA square of black, switching to white at the whim of feathers. Two ovals merged by proximity into one great arc, bounding vision. She pushed off, my trouble girl, set sail into strange lakes where the shorefolk withdrew fish, encased them in lye and buried them until they told gelid truth: "We are all this and nothing more. "We are the secrets you have buried and the parts of yourself that are never seen." The god with the elephant head stared on impassively. He gazed out through rotely carved and shopworn slits of eyes and said: "I could live within the geography of your body." (He's wise that way.) Words overheard and repeated. Mottled elephant ears catch the sound of wasps against the window. The struggle and the toil reduced life to laundry rubbed raw upon a washboard with wicked teeth worn dull from rasping on the bones of the burned dead. Three days short of arisal there was a reprisal. Nails driven through flesh, tearing cartiledge and letting loose the brief torrent of life made liquid. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Each movement of the organ sent each torrent forth. Uncertainty darkens leaden clouds--- was it the organ within my chest pouring red or was it the organ between my legs pouring white on a cold November night? The witnesses are silent on the matter. The texts are corrupt. The scholars squabble. Accusatory eyes stare at me from the television tongueless mouths gawk open flies enter them and hum leave presents of maggots. I lie down in the dark and the bed smells of her sex my trouble girl.
This man in Cambria
Now that same book I bought that day with her |
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