Jay Nichols's Blog - Posts Tagged "poetry"
Life in 2012
Life in 2012
By: Jay Nichols
Who wants to see the fruits of their labors
go rotting on the vine,
or drift away into aethers
believing they’re less than divine?
Third eye opens . . .
to let a little light in.
So may the losers dream
and the dreamers win.
What harm would it do
to cry a million tears,
lose a trillion bucks,
erase a couple years,
hold out hope that
at any cost
everything you own
will never again be lost?
How hard is it to shut up
and go with the flow,
never speak your mind,
never rock any boats,
look straight ahead
and never blink,
stare through cell phone screens
and forget how to think?
Why does it seem like the sun
is getting bigger every day,
true north is slipping degrees,
the bees are going away?
A hypochondriac would claim
it was something the world ate,
while a lunatic would shout:
Repent now! It’s not too late!
When will the scholars give up
and admit nothing is even here,
that truth is a malleable thing,
and so is fear,
that pure expression doesn’t
necessarily have to make any sense?
Put me in a room full of scientists and dullards,
and I swear I wouldn’t know the difference.
Take the inverse of a dying paradigm and shake it until the screws tinkle out, inappropriate laughter at the thought; timeless caresses of a brave new infinity that tumble over and over: waves at the beach—quicksand, garbled speech. Unpopular brands. Bare feet. Snappy responses to queries asked by no one but had to be uttered nonetheless. Impromptu excess. Wasted hours spent in lecture halls, sliding down in seats, staying awake… but only barely. An overconfidence in chemical equations—chain reaction, provocation. The isolated inertia of a species with nowhere else to go. Escape artists running down alleys in black and white—scissoring legs, stage fright. Conmen selling fallout shelters door-to-door, exoskeletons of humans living in sewers. Limelight. Vertigo. A ragtag didgeridoo band in need of a drummer. A Cyclops born without hands. Nuclear fission lighting the world. Comet insurance, major bummer. Inciting riots for body heat. Hanging effigies in the street. Maybe learning a bit about ourselves—shock! The horror! Life in 2012
By: Jay Nichols
Who wants to see the fruits of their labors
go rotting on the vine,
or drift away into aethers
believing they’re less than divine?
Third eye opens . . .
to let a little light in.
So may the losers dream
and the dreamers win.
What harm would it do
to cry a million tears,
lose a trillion bucks,
erase a couple years,
hold out hope that
at any cost
everything you own
will never again be lost?
How hard is it to shut up
and go with the flow,
never speak your mind,
never rock any boats,
look straight ahead
and never blink,
stare through cell phone screens
and forget how to think?
Why does it seem like the sun
is getting bigger every day,
true north is slipping degrees,
the bees are going away?
A hypochondriac would claim
it was something the world ate,
while a lunatic would shout:
Repent now! It’s not too late!
When will the scholars give up
and admit nothing is even here,
that truth is a malleable thing,
and so is fear,
that pure expression doesn’t
necessarily have to make any sense?
Put me in a room full of scientists and dullards,
and I swear I wouldn’t know the difference.
Take the inverse of a dying paradigm and shake it until the screws tinkle out, inappropriate laughter at the thought; timeless caresses of a brave new infinity that tumble over and over: waves at the beach—quicksand, garbled speech. Unpopular brands. Bare feet. Snappy responses to queries asked by no one but had to be uttered nonetheless. Impromptu excess. Wasted hours spent in lecture halls, sliding down in seats, staying awake… but only barely. An overconfidence in chemical equations—chain reaction, provocation. The isolated inertia of a species with nowhere else to go. Escape artists running down alleys in black and white—scissoring legs, stage fright. Conmen selling fallout shelters door-to-door, exoskeletons of humans living in sewers. Limelight. Vertigo. A ragtag didgeridoo band in need of a drummer. A Cyclops born without hands. Nuclear fission lighting the world. Comet insurance, major bummer. Inciting riots for body heat. Hanging effigies in the street. Maybe learning a bit about ourselves—shock! The horror! Life in 2012
Insomnia
Insomnia
By: Jay Nichols
Oft wind-strewn clouds streak across midnight sky,
Tunneling through ruminations of melancholy stuff
Alder branches lean against a tidal breeze, insubordinate
Rickety tangled sticks that give no answer
Because no one’s got the balls to ask
Uplifted chin, obstructed view, tilted ceiling
Beyond which a pale moon does arc, dark and muted
Honeycombed through a skein of clouds
Stretched cobwebs that thin and thicken
Into a coarse patchwork that goes all but unseen
To a world outside your walls that is asleep and sleeping
As you very well should be too
Into the night your mind escapes, a traitor to your biorhythms
A basic contract that has been nulled and voided
Consummate professional that you are you don’t raise a stink
But endure the quiet windy night alone, your home
Though you can’t recall moving your stuff in
So you float and fly and do your Superman thing
Though you’re really just lying in bed, waiting
For morning’s first rays to stir you to action
Because Planet Earth expects you to do things
On its schedule, not yours
You’re not important enough to make rules that others will follow
Though you believe that you are in those trying hours
When sleep eludes and snakes away from your medulla in a giant S
Like the one that should be on your chest
In this superhero fantasy that keeps you occupied at 4:30 AM
The thought of becoming lost never occurs to you
Because you really don’t know where you’re supposed to be anyway
You do worry about your sanity, though
You could always play it safe and seek out chemicals, prescribed or otherwise
But fuck that, that’s cheating, and you know it
In your heart
Truth beats a mellow drum, slow and steady, a constant march
Toward a destination you stretch your inner vision to see
Just beyond the horizon of light and dark
Where the sun is beginning its early morning chin-up
And at that moment, in the distance, you hear the long, low moan of a train whistle
Your mind seeks out connection with another
And finds it
With the voice you hear only in your brain, you speak for all the quiet ones in the quiet hours:
I am with you
By: Jay Nichols
Oft wind-strewn clouds streak across midnight sky,
Tunneling through ruminations of melancholy stuff
Alder branches lean against a tidal breeze, insubordinate
Rickety tangled sticks that give no answer
Because no one’s got the balls to ask
Uplifted chin, obstructed view, tilted ceiling
Beyond which a pale moon does arc, dark and muted
Honeycombed through a skein of clouds
Stretched cobwebs that thin and thicken
Into a coarse patchwork that goes all but unseen
To a world outside your walls that is asleep and sleeping
As you very well should be too
Into the night your mind escapes, a traitor to your biorhythms
A basic contract that has been nulled and voided
Consummate professional that you are you don’t raise a stink
But endure the quiet windy night alone, your home
Though you can’t recall moving your stuff in
So you float and fly and do your Superman thing
Though you’re really just lying in bed, waiting
For morning’s first rays to stir you to action
Because Planet Earth expects you to do things
On its schedule, not yours
You’re not important enough to make rules that others will follow
Though you believe that you are in those trying hours
When sleep eludes and snakes away from your medulla in a giant S
Like the one that should be on your chest
In this superhero fantasy that keeps you occupied at 4:30 AM
The thought of becoming lost never occurs to you
Because you really don’t know where you’re supposed to be anyway
You do worry about your sanity, though
You could always play it safe and seek out chemicals, prescribed or otherwise
But fuck that, that’s cheating, and you know it
In your heart
Truth beats a mellow drum, slow and steady, a constant march
Toward a destination you stretch your inner vision to see
Just beyond the horizon of light and dark
Where the sun is beginning its early morning chin-up
And at that moment, in the distance, you hear the long, low moan of a train whistle
Your mind seeks out connection with another
And finds it
With the voice you hear only in your brain, you speak for all the quiet ones in the quiet hours:
I am with you
