Category: Poetry

Finding Ideas

Where does one find ideas?

I have a few options already conveniently laid out for that, just in case you’re wondering and would like a bit of inspiration for your next writing session.

Ideas may be found:

• when you’re on the back of a rhino during sweeps week
• when you’re looking for an easy win at whatever particular sweepstakes gobbledygook
• in the shower, when you’re rehashing the constitutionality of bellybutton rings
• when going down an elaborate water slide and your swim attire bunches up on you
• in the intricate landmass of one’s diverted psyche
• in the cheaps bin at your friendly neighborhood record store
• as you’re taking a break from the mindless rock breaking that Uncle Sam thought you’d enjoy doing as an act of courtesy towards the U S of A
• when the idea of finding ideas has gone horribly wrong and you’re scrounging around in the dark to try to concoct something before your friends ridicule you for taking so long to come up with just one idea, but then you remember that you don’t have any friends, and you’ve been defending yourself this whole time (while everybody around you seems to lack interest in your entire deal, which seems ludicrous to you until you passionately enlist the support of total strangers and get the reaction that only the more pragmatic among your friend group would have predicted, if said friend group were to actually exist)

So when you’re out there flagging down ideas, just remember one or two of these techniques and your creativity will flourish because of it!

Stubborn One

Petrification process, present yourself!

Not yet, eh? Why not?
Not talking, eh? Stubborn one, aren’t we?

Well, if you won’t talk, then I’ll just have to be the one to break the ice.

Once upon a time, a fly buzzed around from place to place. Its favorite place to land was upon the top spike of a stegosaurus’ back. Didn’t matter which particular specimen, as long as the spike was at the highest point of the animal.

It may seem odd that I’m mentioning a fly’s perching preference, but by the time I’m done explaining why, you will have–at the very least–a beginner’s understanding as to how futile our existence proves to be over the course of time.

I have now finished my explanation, in case you weren’t aware.

No Such Luck

Journeyman centenarian, your
squadron of sheep hurlers
begged you to curdle off the cliff
while dangling circumlindrically–
as though in a play.

No such luck.

Life is a raised platform,
gawking peanut gallery
all around, over-adorned yaps
temporarily agape
toward a permanent problem.

The plight of the talented
is wasted on the non-observant.

Mindfulness

Presented to my field of vision
on the perilous eve of Hitler’s birthday:
one brilliant cardinal couple,
ruby red, vermilion.

I remember the story of eagles,
mythical thunderbirds
who hunted the lightning snakes
to protect oblivious humanity–
floating where they don’t belong–
from their own untimely end.

Nature allows us to gather
and worship at her feet–if only
we scrape together enough respect
through meditation and mindfulness.

Peabrain

I preyed upon myself
through lack of imposed restriction
and dearth of self-shepherding.
Anything was–and still is–possible
when given the proper attention
or suitable elbow grease.

But who did I think I was fooling?
Certainly not myself:

Enigmatic Pilgrim Extraordinaire[!]

performing dichotomous dives
into shallower waters for all to watch–
on an annual basis.
I could have sold tickets
to these affairs. At least then
I wouldn’t be mired in so much debt.

If only I brandish a magic wand
and distract that Paleolithic peabrain
while my other hand composes tarantellas
or masters new guitar chords
to incorporate into the cliché magnum opus
that I’ve been planning since,
oh I don’t know… birth.

Passenger

A charming, alarming chili bit of nonsense fried my circuits for the latest of the schnitzengruben factors, not at all unlike the sleaze you’d unravel with a long hard look at the compact disc (spectrum and all).

I helped an old lady off the bus, and ever since, people are just lumps of shit doing the bare minimum whenever possible at the expense of others. I’ve noticed that I tend to do the opposite (at the peril of tooting my own horn), where I neglect myself and only give my “authentic person” to people I don’t know a lick about. And then I turn around and neglect the needs of anyone who dared take the time to develop a rapport with this here sad sack.

All I know is this: there are ideas and there are ideals. Ideals may be met through the exploration of ideas, and ideas may only be found as a passenger of an old freight train (as it rumbles its way across the plains).

Impressionology

Facile fabrication comes with half-price wine and a half-decent idea of what it means to be a cut-rate pilgrim on the eve of the seventh tardigrade.

So now, Jimber Unfletching Libberdijibbet (that’s his stage name) has a bone to pick with the absurd nature of his very existence on this here rock orbiting a mid-grade star of no particular distinction. For one: how could his sorry-ass soul have been picked to inhabit a corporeal manifestation of this godforsaken planet? His mind simply wasn’t malleable enough to adapt to such mental calisthenics, even if said activities only constituted a sixteenth of one morning each second Thursday after waterobics.

He needed a tutor of sorts to escort him down the row of unconcerned minds, so he could become one of those most-enviable kinds of folks who look so cool that their general demeanor forces them to do everything but justify the wherewithal that led the to cultivate such a persona in the first place.

But, after all, we happen to inhabit an age of severe impressionology. I can see I may have lost you on that last one. It’s essentially a myriad of minuscule multiplicities as seen through the eyes of numerous (some would say innumerable) individuals, wherein people tend to default toward the middle of the pack so as to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of those in the know.

I know.