Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
When striving to grasp reality
how is it recognized if found
as surely abject futility
with life now in fantasy gowned?
Our personal credulity
shapes up what’s reality
Endless our gullibility
as we crave hyperbole
All faded to triviality
including hate’s lethality
Beware of life in frugality
hail corporate mentality!
Thus our personal immorality
became societal normality
Through 4-way stops
flashy cars glide by
past cutesy shops
Below happy sky:
Honk, honk
check my new wheels
clonk, clonk
watch my new heels
Bodies fit or sagging
Kids dragging, lagging
Spouses hugging, nagging
Machos swag, bragging
Watch both bouncing soft belly guts
& perfect bodies with boards
stepping out from their daily ruts
the beach culture’s serfs & lords
While lacking existential traction
dwell fleetingly in rhapsody!
Beyond ‘daily grind’ satisfaction
what fun albeit fantasy!
Been rotating with agility
while precisely ‘hanging in there’
in serviceable docility
next to gurgling porcelain chair
Squeezable white roll flowingly gowned
personality tightly bound
gradually becoming unwound:
Can’t handle one more flushing sound!
Then after no more sheets to be ripped
lost in predicament mirthless:
Tossed away naked to the core, stripped
abandoned, overlooked, worthless
But behold! By a tiny child found
the roll’s core now joyfully blown
Dreams of fulfillment finally crowned:
Roll reborn as gleaming trombone!
Thanks but, they’re mere hinges
Worse though is my mind
bumping on the fringes
To some: too opined
Were it only mind & knees
what a gentle, kindly breeze!
But Life is howlingly intractable
careens oddly, nefariously
Life’s play is but tenuously actable
although sometimes hilariously
She’s wrapped in haute couture
a mere distractive detour
as with purloined demure
she’s all exigent allure
So if you can’t withstand seduction
your fallback may be harm reduction
+)
-harm reduction = a public health strategy that was developed initially for adults for whom additction abstinence does not seem feasible
On winged feet our ‘indoor racer’
with wild hair flowing, flying
trajects like gun fireworks tracer
eternally she’s plying
Upwardly, leveling stairs
utensils clattering
all with efficiency’s airs
Bystanders scattering
Smoothly she slides round corners
‘smartphonely’ connected
Past cowering bench warmers
on short cuts perfected
+)
-bench warmers = among those her slacker husband
“Strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days” – Chris Hedges
Indulging each bagatelle
welcoming every distraction?
In our games of show-and-tell
we lack reality traction
Why not live to be able to say
when catches us the Grim Reaper:
‘At least I agonized in the fray
make sure to tell the Gate Keeper!’
Rather in ungainly Reality struggle
than vainly in Fantasy trying to snuggle
Decision making worth not one iota
wobbling, am yet again straddling the fence
Long since depleted my green house gas quota
The same old dead end dance: Ambivalence
Why another near speed of sound detour
thirty thousand feet above the ground?
Tell me, what’s conceivably the allure?
In Life where am I really bound?
Am no longer a sightseer
as found the ‘there’ over there
would no more enrich or endear
than does the ‘here’ back home here
So there, er, here!
That P is perpetually the victim
at any time, any situation
declares the non-negotiable dictum
inviolate line of demarcation:
First the P impatiently inspects
and condescendingly dissects
Then emphatically disaffects
and contemptuously reject
Exclaims if offered Perfection:
“A set up, attempted sting!”
triggering instant rejection:
“Don’t offer the perfect thing!”
The P never needs to be coerced
A sneeze? “Call the doctor or nurse!”
Salivating, she expects the worst
So why not just line up the hearse?
But if lined up, of course: “Wrong hearse,
wrong coffin, and who stole my purse?”
+)
P = pitshetsh (Yiddish): chronic complainer
From our body we may learn
beyond what mere words can express
what our mind may not discern:
To hold on would be to digress
Old age slips of grasp & grip
may only be appearing so
as we do not at all slip:
Just loosening & letting go
No need cower before What’s Next
just stay calm, let’s attempt unvexed!
So rejoice, nothing is amiss:
Aging is indeed the balmy breeze
soon now we’ll bridge that Great Abyss
to swing on Eternity’s trapeze