The Kilgore Trout Manoeuvre (Republished)

Ben Naga

THE KILGORE TROUT MANOEUVRE

Would sometimes be found
Shaking his head at the clock and scowling
Said: “Logic is a tool
Not a home address”

Called himself a psychologist
Said he was conducting experiments
Said: “Luther said every person is their own priest
And by God if they aren’t their own psychologist too!”

Read Burroughs and Dick; said they really spoke to him
Lucky he didn’t end up on a Section
Said: “The wise use their power gently
And strive in secret to improve their character”
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Kilgore Trout is a fictional author who appears in several Kurt Vonnegut novels, where a number of his plots are briefly described. (Check the internet for more details.) This device allows Vonnegut to (a) write things while disclaiming authorship of them (though the disclaimer is clearly flimsy) and (b) communicate some big ideas in a few sentences rather then having to write a…

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Madly In Love (Repost)

MADLY IN LOVE

Her life redrawn as a comic strip … sans comedy.
No longer that dynamic duo. Batteries flat.
Bats in the belfry, robbin’ bewildered senses blind.
And … adrift might best describe it. Hooked, blind and snookered.

…..(He is the one?)

Even lying beside her, not truly here, he lies
oceans away, behind cold fronts, lines of icy bars,
biting winds, squalls of temper, hurricanes of contempt.
Comforts herself with poetry and sweet memories

…..(He is the one!)

that turn to nightmares where he’s drowning, calling her name.
Then she is there, reviving him (mouth to mouth, of course).
Waking to find him gone she recaulks her leaky fancies,
sets her sails for yet another day tacking upwind.

…..(He is the one!)

Eschewing havens, but never her hope, she soldiers on,
soiled sails reduced to tatters, she rows from pole to pole,
trawls the seven seas. Her treasure? Nowhere to be seen.
He has unfurled his true colours: the skull and crossbones.

…..(He is the gone.)

Conversation

Reposted from long ago.

Ben Naga

CONVERSATION

Unacknowledged this hawk-eyed underlife;
unseen, hovering soundlessly above,
observes our attempts to communicate.
Bars and then spaces, spaces and then bars;
words and then spaces, spaces and then words.
Music, conversation in the early dawn.

My words cut glass, a trigonometry.
Yours a slice of reality TV.
Cutting edge music this, fraught with discord.
Words enfold mirrored worlds; space echoes space.
Uncharted, the space within the worlds;
chimeric, the worlds within the spaces.

You twitter from inside, captive songbird.
I twitter from outside, locked out, exiled,
feeding this bonfire of words to keep warm,
maybe finding among these words refuge,
sanctuary, a hiding place. And then
some note peeps deep within that melody,

tingles in my ear, tiptoes warily
into the light: the song of the phoenix;
lightning bolt sending a shiver up the spine.
The unwatched cauldron at last boils over
revealing us to be understudies,
stand-ins while…

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Nature

Decided to repost this ancient poem. It seems sadly as relevant as ever. 😦

Ben Naga

NATURE

Could be someone
Designated a “world leader”
Or a “captain of industry”
Or just some unwitting contributor
To one in a million on line forums

But on a sudden
That within me throbs and swells
And lifts its eyes to heaven
And bursts its banks
And flows down untrammelled

To see how they draw pleasure
From the chance to cause another pain
With their stiff necks
Their red eyes
And the rightness alcohol lends

And again I am drawn to reflect
And ponder
Where boundaries can ever be meaningfully drawn
To notions like “nature”
Or “human”

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The Magical Act

THE MAGICAL ACT

Teaching is love
Which is to give
…..the space to breathe
To feed
…..asking nothing in return

Teach me
Love me
Teach me to love
…..and teach in my turn
Paying back to the spirit of man

In His Cups

IN HIS CUPS

A sip of wine
A hint of melody …
Hallowed foundations
Shift ungoverned

Melt into lavaflows
Unleash unadmitted yearnings
Challenge this paltry masquerade
Yelled from minaret or pulpit

Hounded by fatwa and heresy
Across the centuries, this dented I
Which has, for all of that brouhaha
Such shallow roots

Must be why they ban
These dangerous demons
Intoxication, music,
Dancing, sex

While we for our part
Fight tooth and nail
To retain or else regain
These royal roads

Home

Weather Or Know

WEATHER OR KNOW

Hard rains sweep by
Rinse soiled streets clean
Brief respite though
Hark, the next deluge
Of turbid effluence
Generously gifted
By the thoughtless

Slumbering in simplicity
No fearful encounters
In radiant solitude
Wherein to acknowledge
Realisation’s spiky burdens
And consoling gifts
Onward, onward, comrades

To oblivion
And no beyond
Hooves strike faster now
Valley of death looms
Engorging black hole
Rolling thunder clap
Hard rains sweep by

No encore

Dare Devils (Reposted)

DARE DEVILS

Sly peeps from a foxhole I spy
Which of you though I wonder
Is the least untrustworthy one?
Variations on you taking turns
Flash past the slits of my eyes
Each taking their best shots

Taking their own sweet time
While I too take mine slowly
Ploughing through mugshots
Of women both lost and found
Tacitly playing judge and jury
Accuser and accused alike

Oh don’t make me lie to you
Let’s drop stubborn opinions
Let me lie with you instead
See us gratefully transported
To some other place far away
Yet together here all the time

The Daily Grind (Reposted)

THE DAILY GRIND

morning well wicked early still
when alarm bell rings

unglue gummy eyes
peer through foetid gloom
grope around to kill it
sniff up last night’s stale breath
puke worthy – and you expected?

quick shower, squirt and spray
baited hooks set – and dreams
“I swear (s)he fancies me”
a hopeful phone trills – eyes gleam
and stick it in your ear – “hi”

now on your mark, get set
and go, raging or else uncomplaining
by crammed tube or heaving bus
or through poison-pumping gridlock
noxious hell whichever option

a compliant commuter – a clone – a costumed clown
stuck up the back end of a pantomime horse
blindly galloping into thunderous oblivion
holding your snotty nose to the grindstone
scrounging shekels to fuel your shakey schemes

yes, here’s the life you were schooled for
to be laid on the butcher’s chopping block
to hang ripe for the black reaper’s picking
next to our attempts to heal our broken hearts
keeping food on the table is their sharpest weapon

but pity the overseers in their turn
the restless scuttling tinker men
well heeled tepid heartless overlords
with their eternal fear of the rank and vile
whose oversensitivity is such a bore

do they lie in the dark wakeful
awaiting the day their own alarm bells ring?

Reconditioning

Reblogged on WordPress.com

Source: Reconditioning