Chastisement comes to us from the Greek,
just kidding it’s from Old French,
and before that Latin.
And you can follow it back to PIE and beyond—
To the first poet to utter a sound, and beyond—
From since there’s been vocal cords,
or rattles,
or hairy legs,
there has been chastisement,
and poets do it the best.
Load and effort
Balancing the needs
of the artist with
the needs of the man
is a hard thing to do
beginning with it’s the man
writing this because the
artist is dead immobil-
ized at least, feels
permanent, tormented
and unable too,
but in there somewhere
is the eye, the last piece
of the artist recomending
linebreaks and howling
over word choice
and worrying about how
this will ever be digitilized
ones and zeros motherfuckers
it’s impossible he shouts
his last words and dies
back again as I’m saying balance is a pitiful word for what
I want to describe:
a fulcrum 75% along a beam
with the needs of the artist at the short end
Analogistan
You can stay out
He tells the cigarettes
You come with me
He tells the coffee
When he hits the edge
And can no longer balance
The composition book
On his knee
Heading out or in in
Search of a suitable
Surface to lie or lay
His book and his pen
Static
My advice to anyone within earshot is to be mindful of the static. Pay attention to the bubbling seething about you.
Today’s political movers and shakers were yesterday’s hate-filled street corner preachers. Shouting and raging against modernity, against humanity.
We ignored that boil as it oozed and popped and spread across the nation. We whistled our own tune, or cranked up our supplied canned responses, and strolled on by.
For generations we ignored it. Either because not our place, or off putting, or too noisy, too staticky to process.
There’s a secret to understanding static, though. It’s subtle and sublime. Static hides its patterns in plain sight. It’s everything converged, smashed, spread and packed. It’s everything at once and it can be explored.
Take a breath and freeze the static, examine it, get inside and peek out. It’s moiré patterns will half and fold and blend back into their constituents, which again half and fold and reveal.
The static reveals the reality we ignore. The stuff that’s always with us, and around us, and which through us, can be known. It’s all right there, in front of you as bold and sharp as tonight’s full moon. Take it hold, unfold it, and pay attention to it.
Pay attention to the constant roiling frenzy of ugly disdainful kooks. They will/have become our masters.
Poems A Random Image Gallery
The doodle that accompanied version 6 of Yellow Clay
No Slight Intended, a poem by Franklyn Monk
How to Blend, a poem by Franklyn Monk
“A Throne!”, a poem by Franklyn Monk.Background image “Empty Theatre” by Max Wolfe under (CC BY 2.0).
Communion, a poem by Franklyn Monk
Thud-klomp, a poem by Franklyn Monk
Summer, a poem by Franklyn Monk
Sweet Moonlight, a poem by Franklyn Monk
Boo, from Franklyn Monk
Edit: 2/26/15, 9:20:55 AM
I’ve kept this post private since July 7th.
That’s, what, 7 and a half months?
I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s not very good. Maybe I was just checking out galleries. Hell, I’m not even looking at it now, just publishing it and moving on.
Although, I did glance a couple things:
There’s a couple old poems, some of a few that I didn’t loose.
This may be the first public showing, and it’s down a dark and remote corridor. That’s funny, it’s so funny, but hell, they stayed hidden for decades, they can hide out a little longer. It’ll be like an Easter Egg to you, my devout fan.
And I have two versions of Boo! there.
One white, one grey, both transparent.
Because it’s cool.
You should check out the Boo! post. It’s transparent grey over grey, with a copy of the page background sandwiched between.
The effect is cool, albeit on a limited number of devices.
Oh, and also, it copy-and-pastes, and prints, as text.
I saw one of my animated notepad gifs. I don’t know why I chose to include this one over the other, I don’t know where the others are, and I don’t know if any of them became anything else.
The rest you may already be familiar with.