GROUPTHINK

There are minds that nobody knows anymore

for those that can remember them

have been herded to camps or corporate bought

to relearn to never again teach human evil singularity

to outreach in classrooms doctrine bound thought.

So what will you say with sole ability erased away?

The idea that freedom is never painless

but it can be—if you bear the cost

which has to be dead intellectualism?

Traded for the desire of oligarchy capitalism?

The goal ripping current and coming

on a rising tide is bliss filled self-destruction

killing the engines on our separate cultures single ship

and worm hole the keel that our soul’s vessel will tide born

nestle individual thinking upon the shoals of groupthink.

I believe that what you believe is what they believe

of those that believe the same thing and that is the answer.

Question nothing for you know all you need to know;

how to be a glorious (but impoverished) member

rising one minded thoughtless as a part of the whole

Question no answers knowing that

the answers ever be the words rebound

in other useful words that mean the same

answer as the asked question spoken

only they have a different token sound?

You, then YOU will comfortably KNOW what to do.

The same as I would which would

be the same as you and them ALL and their and those

and whatever THAT we are told IS the way to be.

The questions and answers are not NECESSARY.

Admit it now that when all vessels engines are firing on all cylinders

you simply don't feel right because then you might just think in a way

that isn’t full of fear and fright and you may wake up to realize

that what you see isn’t the same sight as the person standing next to you.

Good God almighty what a horrible, evil, frightening thing the see!

That it is your thinking individually that sets your herded ass free.

© M Durfee

5/17/13

RE-TIRED

Every step is a turned ankle.

It wouldn’t be this way

if there were yet lovely growing water

singing running clean, cold, clear

in the river bed of knowing;

that now is just another dried up spot

on a warring planet killing the low

evaporating every pure drop

exposing all of the loose rivers bed rocks

that we are all forced to tramp upon.

We should spend our steps making concrete

to sew the loose stones together.

Then there would be no more left to throw at each other.

Still as in everything there is a downside,

if the water ever came back clean, cold, clear

it would have no dear voice left with to sing.

Until that dream of a past becomes a present

pain is justified in both the ankle breaks and sprains

coupled to the intellectual thirst with ignorant thought trains.

Every thought these days is a hurt,

a lost passage that is a little grief upon a little grief

until a great mound is grown.

The only relief left the walker now

is the old pebble in the mouth trick

to slake the thirst to simply know

where it was the knowledge

for living together went to?

I suppose that answer I know and knew,

some tuition charging college only meant

for the very elite few who can afford

the ancient wise wet words found in books.

My own ignorance knowing

 has built up to where I now understand

better than before why it is depression

not footsteps or sadness

laid in trails across times sands.

For knowledge kills the knowing

that was meant to be a candle light

in withered weathered hand a way to show.

I traded my portion of happiness

for desire to  understand

why walking dry river beds

only had two outcomes;

two horns to be gored upon.

Flash floods to wash me away

to life not desired nor wanted anymore

or turned in ankles broken again and again

for no matter how much I uncovered,

in my dry stony wadi bed discovered

I found I was still ignorant and shackled

to this ever warring world made by man.

© M Durfee

5/16/13

NO NEED FOR POETRY FOR HER

I am supposed to write poetically

about my mother today.

I refuse to do that

because I know

she would have not wanted me to say

the things I would write.

She’d call them a big windless blow,

useless on a dark starless night.

We never, ever, talked of love

or any of what that shit means

but rather she showed actions

and righteous fights are the only things

that ever accomplished a man’s dream.

Too many years’ dead now

I should say I miss her but

that would be a lie

for every time we  look in the mirror

I see so much of her in I

that we both know without her

there’d be no me looking back at us.

© M Durfee

5/12/13

WILL I EVER GET LUCKY?

This is not my place anymore. I am surrounded by too many reminders of when my home had worth, value to society. I have gone beyond sadness for this place, dropped down to wretchedness. You know life is hard when another house near you buns down and your only regret is that is wasn’t yours.

© M Durfee

5/10/13

This is a 55 word piece of reality writing for G mans FridayFlash 55 word challenge. You joust with words to make them say something inexactly 55 words and knock the challenge off its mount with your lance thenlink it to his blog. You’re supposed to do it on Thursday but it says Friday Flash 55 (I think it’s for the alliterative assonance of the title) none the less I wrote this today Friday and will link it to him. He will of course eventually get around to kicking my ass but then when he does I may just get lucky.

CLUTTER ON THE TABLE

Coffee rings overlapping one atop the other

marking the table which carefully held mugs

that flowered hearts once flowed into.

The many great plans and pains

those rings retained as they worked

their way deeper into the wooden grain

of that polished sawn flat yet well-worn plain.

The lives of couples plans for days ahead

as they spoke of love one to the other.

The many napkin mapped ideas

of many a positive merry businessman

using everything from cartridge

to counter borrowed ball point pens.

All the great groups of plans

to find a way to grow rich enough

to comfortably retire with money enough put away

long before the infirm time of riding

to days of their getting too old, bald and gray

as earners providing for families at their side.

More than plans passed those coffee stain rings

had been traded over that worn lacquered wooden surface

that if only it could talk about the great many days

with its plenty happy sad story; what a song it could sing.

The tales of love and hate, wars, death and fate;

the off color comments few condemned as cold,

because they were inside jokes that laid more than few

in laughter prostrate as they gathered as friends.

over a tabletop that grew new to old toward its own end.

As time passed without the table

having anything to ask or say

about holding many a friendly game

where pals squared off to play

using the well-worn with some corners torn

deck of cards honestly dealing

 (except in euchre

where it’s only cheating

if you get caught deal stealing.)

The many teenage dramas seen

that in the end their meaning

meant little more than nothing.

But at the time were so terror fraught

that the young were certain life was ending.

They too laughed and cried real heartbroken tears,

their fears just as real as the spent older couples

who shared scalding hot cups of joe there

who knew that time was stealing from them

the hard earned fair share, that as they aged

and broke down as government was taking from them

all they worked for, all they struggled to save.

.

Yes if that old table, varnish cracked and mellowed

with its multiple permanent coffee mug ring stains

could talk the many stories it could tell all 

the sat down at people stories ghostly remains

of everything it had earned and knowledge learned.

But no one paid it any mind

as it gathered the dust from lives collected

from the passing history of time

and no one who noticed  or complained

when that thing was broken apart and discarded.

As it was replaced without regard

by an easier to clean Ikea plastic slick topped

piece of furniture which with every wipe

the history that had just happened there

marked in stains was simply with a wet cloth

wiped away and rinsed down the drain.

© M Durfee

5/8/13

SILENCE MAKES THE NOISE HAVE MEANING

Who am I now

that I am nowhere found

except somewhere in the silence

between the different calibers

of shotgun shack poets

and prospectors

looking for the golden

pound of fame traded for flesh;

the exact weight of seeing me

discovered alive at the noisy party.

Rising to a place

I never wanted beyond

the grace where laid buried

the words I once loved.

words I wanted, which

never had a wealth of peace

for me

while looking for the way

to find their richness,

A wealth I was given,

a prosperity I lost

somewhere along the way

before I was ever

parented by them.

I was too stupid to learn,

a thought my tutor sold me.

I had to educate myself

to weariness

and now

the knowledge of silence

I am told

is not wealth worth having;

and I believe the teacher.

Yet it is the

silence,

that makes

the noise

have meaning.

If you look for me,

though I know

I am forever lost.

look in the silence.

I cannot love away

the hate anymore.

The teacher was correct,

I am too stupid to learn,

I am lost somewhere

In the nowhere of

ignorance of life’s knowledge.

© M Durfee

5/6/13