Business in the Middle Age
Sometimes people live half their lives
To realize that they had never been living at all,
Only catering to the expectations of others,
And for what? —
Many of them begin to wonder.
When there was sunshine in their life,
They tended to ignore the light spilling over the dawn,
Focusing instead on the dusk of their intuition,
Teaching their eyes to callous
On illumination,
So the world in darkness is more visible.
Blindness comes to all that seek it.
Some of them sit in an endless continuum,
Recycling the same modicums of waste
They've perpetuated,
Fueled by a steady stream
Of Arabica bean coffee—
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Cremation
When I die,
I hope that my body
Is cremated.
I want people I never knew
To stuff me in an almond wood box—
One lined with white-linen
(As a metaphor
For comforting peace) —
And shove my inanimate self down a funnel
Where I will burn
(hopefully
In only a physical way
And not in a way that refers to the state
Of my, albeit occasionally
Bitter and disgruntled
And disbelieving
And sometimes ungodly—
Though I do try very hard to
Be honest and empathetic;
I'm failing at the process sometimes -
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Reductio Ad Absurdum
SOMETIMES I feel like,
I f e e l
LIKE
I,
I I
I I
I
I I I
I I I
I
I M LUSINNG
MAI; mnd.
I'll be sitting in something like the half-lotus
Position, and I'll be staring at my computer screen,
Which is tilted downward just slightly, so I can
See… if I play a game—which I won't (I have a TV for that) ,
But whatever—and I'll just be half-way into some
Deep focus meditation, wondering about Mu
Or something else, or something yogic,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Song for the Somnambulist
I
A claret sky hangs up above, overhead,
Blushing at the coming storm's warm warning.
The heavily tempered clouds lightly tread
From the twilit night-spread to the morning.
I am restless, watching atmospheres pass—
An orbiting layer of glassy space,
An open window made of ozone gas
That closes by the wind's quickening pace.
Like a shadow, it adumbrates the stars—
The thick, transmogrifying veil looming.
The coruscating orbs cover and are
Lost in the condensing fog's consuming.
In my sheets, I try to sleep so soundly
In an abyss, absorbed so profoundly.
II
I amble through the murky surroundings
Like a drunken, strafing fighter—
Disabled by my own confounding,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Peacetime
We're living in peacetime—
floating and adrift in
an endless space
of instant materialization,
lɐǝɹǝɥʇǝ waves coasting on
the crystal rim
of our infrastructure,
impelled, jettisoned
through the jet steam
ɯɐsʇǝɾ of
a jocular lifestyle.
We're living in peacetime.
We refuse
to be roused
from out medicated slumber
slɐɔıɯǝɥɔ lɐɥʇǝl ɟo lıɐʇʞɔoɔ ɐ
suıǝʌ ɹno ɥƃnoɹɥʇ ƃuısɹnoɔ —
t̡͕͔̦̝̏̾̓̆r̞ͥ̂ͮ͂͝ë̯̱ͯͯ̽ͧ̓ḁ͇̱͓̣͚̭ͬc̥͍ͤ̓͐l̫ͯ̔ḛ ̿̕ ̣̤b͖ͭ͗̇̎̑̍l̂̓͏o̦̣̬͚̻͈̔o̸͖̩͉̖͔̲͎̐ͬ̀̐̇̎d͔̥̝̖̹̲̻̿̃̂f ̖̗̳̓ͮ̊̈͌͘lͪͬͥỏ̺̩͖̩̼̱̽̉̀w̱͉͕̙̲͂͊̂͊
pǝʇɐɔɔısǝp'pǝʇɐssıdsuı
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Cave
The light that emits from my computer screen
Asperses shadows like a music box projector's
Ceiling diorama—
They spin around and around,
Swirling in the aleatoric symphony
Of indetermined notes,
Ingeminated until I fall asleep—
In my mind.
I don't want to look up,
I don't want to look up,
I don't want to look up—
Because if I do,
I might realize
That where I am,
Hooked on the O/S
Of terminal attachment,
A besotted addiction
To buzz words that rattle me from my consciousness
And quake me through the cracks of the pop culture lifestyle.
I only see a ventose orator,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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The Apathy of Optimism
Let's say that you have been fired
From your job after working there
For something like 15 years.
Let's say that,
Despite outsourcing and business mergers
And the synesthesia of new corporate marketing strategies,
It is a result of your attitude.
Have you ever considered that
You exist to feed others full of positive vibrations,
And glutinously so—
We can no longer afford to allow
The tempestuous climate change
Of social thought
Clamber, clamor, whatever
Over the barriers we protect
Our financial state with.
If you smile, exuding the morality
(That We would like you to have
) There would be no reason
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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A Trip to the Vet
Lately, you have been sick
And we just don't know what to do with you.
You're itching at your skin—
Scratching the dry, leathery patches until they scab
And ooze a mixture of blood and puss.
Your ears are dripping a waxy fluid
And the kids choke on it
When they go to cuddle with you.
It's not that we don't love you anymore.
You just don't smell pleasant anymore.
You're also getting crotchety,
As if you snarl at the world that did this to you,
Angry at God for birthing you to become this.
Your legs wobble when you walk.
It looks like they could cave in at any time,
Causing you to collapse, helplessly
Lying on the floor.
If you hadn't become so resigned to your discouragement,
So engulfed in the utter disappointment you have for your failing limbs,
People might feel bad for you,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Technophobia
What has technology done for me?
Well, for one—
It's made me unnecessarily happy,
But I'm very grateful for it.
I mean, my whole life has followed me on the computer,
Transposed to a screen—
The human condition to me, my experience,
Resides more inside a TV than the world
Outside
My window.
When I was a little kid,
I never played any sports and I never had any interest in them
Until I played Madden 2007
With a few of my friends.
I was already an adult at this point,
But, for a moment,
I returned to that feeling,
That kind of feeling that makes me nostalgic now,
And I enjoyed myself,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Unincorporated Insights
What context contributes toward meaning?
What illusive patterns outline our thoughts?
What process prevents mindless careening
Into tangles of intangible knots—
Into the depths of deeply-rooted seeds
Of imponderable definition?
And what flower does theodicy breed
By the threat of holistic omission?
What cryptic mysteries do we express,
Though in traces of vagrant memories—
Perhaps causing us to hide and repress
Them beneath our transient reveries?
What codex—so voiceless—do we create?
What emergent grammar elucidates?
What emergent grammar elucidates
The syntax of our juxtaposition?
Why must we meander and gravitate
Toward the pull of blank exposition?
We speak in indefinite articles,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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