20141015

Ivars Balkits


Today Were Special

14.

Sunrise/sunset were simultaneous.
Drought/flood graphed together.
Good/evil had location, too.
Sky had earth as its center.
Role playing its counterpart.
History unrecorded history.
Every tree its downfall (some day).
Wasn't it really most times Y?
Ice cubes had six unequal sides.
Theory reapportioned wealth (in theory).
What you said came of nowhere.
No one walked to the airports, almost.
Violence kept the streetcleaners busy.
Made hay for the philosophers.

13.

Anger was on every channel.
Warehouses were roofed with fire.
Fear replaced naivete (chemically).
Simplemindfulness filled a bowl.
Praying continued beyond belief.
Low brain activity was apolitical.
Embarrassment was a backfiring.
Thoughts died in the pen.
Cars were mental.
Beer was helpful.
Feeling was algorithmic, too?
An ear split.
An ear split.

12.

This too shall pass (or did).
The future repeated itself.
The future happened anyway.
Selling out was born again.
An environment had no champion.
Illusion brought relief.
Recreation was going smoothly.
Nothing was in name only.
To-do lists weren't titled.
No one inhaled.

We drew coincidental breaths.
This shall pass                (or did).

11.

Society lost unconsciousness.
You lost a pound another wanted.
Everything was absolute (or should be).
You could have been anyone.
No language was literature.
All was not lost, ever.
People waited for ideas ahead of their time.
I feel like a dog that's had an umbrella opened in its face.
Mm, mm, mm.
Mm, mm. mm.
Mmmmmmm.

10.

Authenticity was up for grabs.
Advertising was the commodity.
You knew me from quoting me.
Continuity meant returning from a break.
Mm, mm, mm.
Mmmmmmm.
Eternally refreshed by the 10-minute break.

A comeback was counter to think tank wishes.
Lessons from propaganda formed.
The rest was mm-hmm.

9.

Philistine was an ethnic slur (once).
Clichés were wise words once (only).
People wore words and bought names.
Names meant everything.
Collage was unavoidable.
People wanted scientific comfort.
Sunglasses inspired fear.
Mmmmmmm.
Someone hit big on the I-ching.

8.

Fear did the voting today.
Grief carried an estimate.
Snipers rescheduled the meeting.
No solution remained but confession.
The sun was in a convenient place.
Crimefighting could be heard for days.
Agitated prowlings abounded.
Copula steepled cupola.

7.

One sentence ended all sentences.
A second amended that.
Passive ways were behaved.
Forgiveness lowered pressure.
Insight was not action.
Ears were wide apart on this issue.
Resignation wrought contentment (imperfectly).

6.

To be trite was to be honest.
The right thing to do was excessive.
To be fragmented was. Was too!
Narcissism sought no second opinion.
Everyone gives in at the last moment.
The vessel drinks its spill.

5.

It was a big day.
Night attached to it.
It ended arbitrarily.
Truisms were crumbs.
Wisdom was crumbly, uh.

4.




Syllables debilitated.

3.

Id id nt.
ItCetera.
Were there any leftover real people left?

2.

“Suddenly” emerged.
“Stopped” slowed to “has stopped.”

1.

The excitement dragged on.



Today Were Special Two


I used to be a contradiction. Now I am.
That said.

An undignified site for the third eye would be the tip of the nose.
That said.

People become symbols too easily in this world. Symbols never become people.

--
The body wanted answers. So it tortured the mind for information. That's what's good about circles.

They don't take sides.
No number of people is beside itself; nor brain has memories, nor other object has memories.
Remember?

As in like.
Too much soft drink, I'm a soft drunk.
And?
That baseball cap, on the shoulder of the side road, did it have a message for me?

--
Finding what to do comes early in life and the tongue makes up its mind.

More exclaiming in children's stories than anywhere.
Remember.

Mood adding music.
Mood adding narrative.

The more babies the more straight lines.

--
The moon was a slippery place. Roundness was everything about it: shape to craters to polymers in 8(rounded off) inches of dust.

Bucky balls.
Remember?

They are the progenitors of atom-thick carbon webs that excite economic impulses now, but which mostly recall for me Alan Watts' representation of us as tubes.

--
The straw figure refuses to lie down.

Even the sexual athlete plays hurt.
Like reddening with blossoms Eshleman's 'omen trench' (o, quote not if you would not be quoted): wisdom bread.

I will stop at anything. Or, I will not stop at anything. You choose.

--
In a television volume wholly muted I hear my grandfather's movie.

In a similarly quite unfinished way the world is catching up to itself, constantly running next to itself, asking questions it's too breathless to answer.
Whose idea of a lowlife are you anyway?

A downing sighted.

Starting from scratch and.
Ending with an itch.

I'm destined to forget.




Ivars Balkits is from Athens, Ohio. He has most recently published poetry and prose in a few anthologies and on the web sites for Thirteen Myna Birds, OccuPoetry, ditch, Silenced Press, Merge Poetry Journal, and Counter Example Poetics. He is a recipient of two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, for poetry in 1999 and creative nonfiction in 2014.
 
 
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