Elusive, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

Elusive pen, thoughts blank when
Pervasive, invasive, distractions bend
The rose has no pose, thorns stick in

Elusive brush, below whisper’s hush
Quiet, desert diet, dust in my head
Parched are these pages void of word

Evasive prose, no words to compose
Fleeting ideas, I cannot suppose
Jot, jot, jot, dot, dot , dot

Stubborn stanzas that will be not
No violent sea, crashing waves to see
Romantic moonbeams dwell silently

My brain on hiatus inconveniently
Desire, oh desire, I do ever so passionately
Desperate to paint a picture for all to see

The poem, the poem, that will never be.
(end)

Another poem about writer’s block.

Call Me Arrogant? By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

Why do you call me arrogant
I am not the one who is belligerent
Why do you call me defiant

You say God will make me compliant
You say he will show me someday
“Or else” if I don’t see it his way

To bow to threats I refuse to play
He takes my autonomy, I have no say
In the fire, tortured forever, I lay

Lets take a long look, at this old book
The King’s rook, for centuries mistook
Magical claims , out of ignorant minds

Talking donkeys, talking bushes
Talking snakes, unicorns fake
Six day earth, mere fanciful wishes

Murderous God, Egyptian firstborn
Genocide flood, excuse? “I warned”
8 left over on that fictional boat

Of inevitable incest I would not gloat
Then the baby, the followers all hail
No second set of DNA, their logic fails

If one were to murder a man in that manor
If one were to stick a spear in his side
If all the blood drained out and ended his life

Hypoxia is asphyxia of the brain
No more oxygen for it to gain
No live cells in it will remain

The brain will die, the oblongata too
Rigor mortis the morbid menu
Lowest point of gravity, blood collects to

Body stiffens like petrified wood
You cannot tell me, your logic is good
That after a day and a half he was in the mood

To leave the cave, I am not that naive
And spare me the argument
Of the eyewitnesses please

None of the Gospels agree on the details
None of the writers used their real names
None of the “historians” that apologists claim

Ever lived during the character’s life
None the books were first hand accounts
Hearsay assertions, no evidence mounts

You want to lecture me, call me arrogant
You’re the one stuck in the past, refusing to
Update your thinking in a modern world

You want me to abandon reason, and that is absurd.

Our species older than human writing
Yet since it’s invention perpetual fighting
A 4 billion year old planet, constantly changing

Five mass extinctions, yet you are insisting
That this Bronze age buddy in the sky
The one you can’t prove, for are willing to die

A 13.8 billion year old massive universe
Yet you condemn me with myopic curse
Falsely assuming I have not read a single verse

You start with an assertion, presupposition
Then shift the burden of proof
Insist that it is my mission

To do you your work for you
Which I will not
The harsh reality for you

Not one lick of evidence have you got.

Upside Down You Turn Me, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

Upside down black retracted umbrella
Coat hanger wires inside your skin
London fog jacket wrapped so tight
Fluttering spy of the October sky
Anne wrote of you
In an unflattering light
Cute dachshund shaped nose
Fish hook talons, tiny as thin
As dental floss, I am at a loss
As to why you get
Such an ill response
You are adorable
(end)

I read a poem by Anne Sexton today called “Bat” and it was vivid, but I love fox bats and they get a bad wrap. I think they are adorable.

The Smile In Your Voice, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Oh you arrogant condescending twit
You don’t care one single bit
Where 40,000 bullets hit

You have that smile in your voice
Your gun fetish porn, your vice
You don’t take guns seriously at all

You don’t care how many bodies fall
You had the nerve to offer me gun training
Do you have any fucking brain cells remaining?

I suffer depression and severe anxiety
Your smile smacks of a stamp collecting hobby
No sense at all that you take them seriously

You’d offer someone mentally ill that lead pill
You don’t care how many those objects kill
I bet when you pick them up they give you a thrill

Is your hand around your penis, are you jerking off
Do you like big butts and big clips, is is your strap on?
Rapid fire ejaculate, good guy mythology, immaculate

Listen you arrogant prick, a firearm is not your dick
Some people should never own a gun
The smile in your voice says they are toys to you for fun

The gun stores that sold my alcoholic father
They didn’t even bother , to do a thorough check
They didn’t care to know, he beat me frequently

It’s all about your rights, and not about public safety
It’s all about your selfishness and your immaturity
It’s all about your toys, your testosterone pumping boys

I am sick of your selfish shit, I am sick of all the lies
I am sick of your bullshit excuses, Second Amendment cries
You want to hand a loaded gun, to the mentally ill?

The fact that you’d blindly ask me knowing not a thing
You think guns are a solution for every fucking thing
Masturbating smile, crimson secretions on everything
(end)

I am so sick of running into arrogant assholes who offer me gun training not knowing I suffer from anxiety and depression. This is the problem with the firearm fetish nutfucks. They claim that more guns will solve the problem and simply training everyone will solve the problem. That is fucking bullshit. People like me should never own a firearm. Not because I would hurt others, but because I am mentally ill, and I am a recovering alcoholic.

And these selfish assholes think “no record” at time of buy means the person buying it will never do anything to hurt themselves or others after that legal buy. It is a fucking myth that only bad guys will use them to commit crimes. The fact is, most gun deaths start out with a legally obtained firearm.

#1 cause of death is suicide. Most people kill themselves with a gun in the home, that was legally purchased by someone in the home. Domestic violence, same thing. Underage and accidental, same thing. Someone in the house bought that gun legally. 40,000 deaths per year are mostly made up of those three categories. You are more likely to injure or kill yourself or someone in your home, than to successfully defend yourself from a complete stranger.

I have long since been done with trying to reason to people with a gun fetish, which is really another form of mental illness. The people I know that have guns that I would trust with guns, don’t brag about them, don’t have a smile in their voice like it is a hobby like fishing or baseball card collecting. The people I trust don’t hoard them, and keep them locked up, they don’t take pictures of them like trophies. And they certainly would not assume that everyone can handle a gun or should have one.

The gung ho nutbags are manipulative sociopaths that are prioritizing their own selfish needs. I blame 50 years of daily brainwashing by Wane La Peedipshit/NRA/NSSF and the gun makers. They don’t give a fuck how many people die. They want more violence so they can use that fear to sell more guns, to cops, to whites, to blacks to all classes, because it isn’t about rights, it is about fucking profits, nothing more. It isn’t about public safety, it is about profits.

We have 40,000 firearm deaths on average per year. And 400million firearms in circulation and growing. More firearms are not making us safer.

A Little Cafe In Peru, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

Vincent escaped San Quentin not sure what to do
He hitched a ride from a future bad guy
Eventually plotted to extort money from the lady who

Helped Vincent elude police, Parry in Irene’s apartment
She had gone every day to his murder trial thinking him innocent
She understood for the same had happened to father accused

He ducked out one night to put is face under a knife
To get a new look, to rectify his his besmirched life
Told his friend George the trumpet player

Asked him if he would do him a favor
Give him a place till the 12th to recover
But after the surgery when he got back

Vincent discovered George dead from an attack
Retreated to Irene’s in silence and bandage
And over the healing she helped him manage

Onto him though, he did not know
The guy who picked him up outside the prison
Figured out where he was and was on a mission

To extort 60 grand, or was it 200k?
Or maybe just the reward for turning him in
Either way , $5,000 was also ok

A tussle under the Golden Gate
Baker went over the rocks
And fell to his fate

Vincent started putting it all together
It was Madge, who wanted to be his suiter
She murdered his wife, made him look the killer

At her high rise he confronted Madge
Backed her up to the window’s ledge
The glass broke she fell to her death

Vincent now knew no chance of vindication
He’d have to go on a permanent vacation
He called up Irene before he left

Tears in his eyes he got on the bus
Irene knew exactly what to do
They met at the little cafe in Peru.
(end)

Yes You Are, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

You are related to that chimpanzee
DNA proves it, but you can’t see
It isn’t in one generation birth directly

Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, Guanine
I am not stating this fact just to be mean
Our ancestor’s fossil records also can be seen

It is why a pine tree and palm tree
Are both called trees
It is why Monarch and Swallowtail butterflies please

It is why Galapagos and sea turtles have their shells
It is why whales and dolphins both have lungs
It is why squirrels and chipmunks look like fun

Crocs and gators will have you on the run
The chicken and bald eagle have scales on their feet
Millipedes and centipedes march to a beat

Like the back of a deck of Bicycle cards
Understanding evolution isn’t that hard
The uniform color is what all life shares

DNA sequence in two base pairs
Flip the top card over, look at it’s face
Flip the next card over, a slightly different air

The ace of diamonds looks not even close
To the King of clubs that time has posed
But the back of the deck both are enclosed

Yes you are related to that chimpanzee
And that blade of grass and the shark in the sea
And the cockroach and tardigrade

Of DNA all life is made

It is just that time and splits occurred
Over millions, billions of years be assured
Darwin and DNA have long since concurred

Think of those amino acids like machine language
Two simple choices of ones and zeros
All on your screen those two choices manage

To make up your operation systems, your programs
Your apps, your gaming, your social media, digital art
Zeros and ones are where computers start

Have multiple tabs on your laptop open?
You can look at those like different chromosomes
Making Facebook and Twitter look different

I know for the Christian this is inconvenient
That all they have is a dirt man Adam
Eve from a rib he call’s madam

Talking snakes with no vocal cords
Unicorns exclusive to the bible’s words
I find that mythology patently absurd

Yes you are related to that chimpanzee
The elephant and and zebra the stripes you see
Slight changes in sequence over time can be

The source of all the amazing diversity
(end)

Sorry theists, but you are related to all life. The earliest life billions of years ago was single cell organisms. Slight changes in the base pairs of Adenine/Thymine and Guanine/Cytosine and Uracil in RNA over billions and millions of years has created all the diversity we see.

It is just time that makes life either closer related in looks in shorter periods and completely different species that are so far separated that the looks are nowhere close to similar. You don’t look like a cockroach because you are not as closely related to it as a chimpanzee. Just like a domestic house cat and tiger are closer related than a tiger and a millipede. But regardless all life has DNA in it ant that makes all life related going back to our common ancestor single cell organism.

Dawkins put it best in describing the diversity of life as being like a deck of cards, the back of the deck is uniform, or the DNA that all life shares, then the slight changes over time of the DNA sequences that make up the different faces on the cards.

The bible is not a scientific textbook. It is a old book of mythology that represents the very bad guesses of the humans that wrote them at that time because they didn’t know better.

Easy Bake Oven, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Angel food cake, potatoes you bake
Wafting aroma, your nose does intake
Lasagna and cheese, your mouth it will please

Pizza pie, that gleam in your eye
Not the place for a baby to die
This all powerful God didn’t even try

To save J’Zyra Thomson from being fried
The adults left them at home, the toddlers did roam
Around the kitchen , and to God this was known

The twins thought it fun, to to make her a bun
Into the oven they stuck her and they turned it on
When the parents got back from the drug store

They found her well done
It horrifies me to know this happened
What was God doing, was he napping?

Made the universe in the blink of an eye
Yet this all powerful God didn’t even try
I cannot say that I am even surprised

6 million Jews, slumber at the switch
9/11 also, God doesn’t make a twitch
Are humans mere lab rats for him to play with?

The kids in Gaza, kids with cancer
I seriously have never gotten a good answer
Fall of man, Eve is to blame

Free will excuse,
All to me are lame
Does this deity ever feel shame?
(end)

Based on a real horrific true story. J’Zyra’s parents left her and her twin 3 year olds alone while they went to pick up pizza and prescription at the drug store. While they were gone, as kids do, they play, but being 3 year olds they don’t know what dangerous objects can do. Pretty sure it was just a game of hide and seek, or maybe they were pretending to cook, but didn’t know what the oven could do.

Now many would say, “Don’t blame God” it was the “free will” of the parents that cased it. Since when does that mean a child should die because of the stupidity of the parents? To me this is just as sick as the story about God murdering all the Egyptian firstborn over a beef he has with an Adult Pharaoh. What could 19 month old J’Zyra Thomson possibly have done in her short life for this allegedly “all powerful” “all seeing” God to sit upstairs with folded arms and say, “Meh, I know the baby will die in horrible pain, and won’t know why they died. I also know the other kids will grow up scarred for life knowing they accidentally killed their sister, but I get to do what I want and I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.”

I would say that either God is inept, malevolent/cruel, or doesn’t exist.

There are American sources to this same story, but they all require subscriptions or have ad blockers. I posted this one because I could get around it. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-26/texas-toddler-dies-in-oven/6975238

Disclaimer.: The title of the poem is not a reflection on the real kids toy by the name “Easy Bake Oven” . It is just used as poetic license as metaphor for the poem.

Brass Class, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Secretariat the stationary chariot
Goes up an down the pole
Circus colored horses
Circle with no goal

Hynde sight is the carousel
Not in pocket but to grab for
If you succeed a ride of one more
The richest ring the legend’s lore

Throw it in the mouth of a clown
If you are riding
On the merry go round
Not many today are ever found
(end)

If you have ever heard “reach for the brass ring”, that means shooting for a better or wealthier life. There is a very literal history to that phrase. Not many merry go rounds today have them. But in the early days the owners of merry go rounds had a device that would dispense brass rings, at the outside parameter of the carousel and if you could grab one as the merry go round was in motion before the ride ended, you got another free ride. Most of the time though, you would have to throw it into a circle at the center of the ride as you revolved around the center. Designed to be difficult if not impossible but enticing enough to get people to pay for more rides to get that free ride.

Chrissie Hynde is the lead singer of the band the Pretenders and she had a song called “Brass In Pocket”.

Secretariat was a famous horse won the “Triple Crown”, which consists of the Belmont, Preakness and Kentucky Derby.

Kahu, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Maybe it is time to adopt a word
Other than the one you’ve always heard
When it comes to your fur babies?

We usually call ourselves “owners”
But our pets are not livestock
They are not sheep of a flock

They will curl up on your lap
Cosey up to take a long nap
You end up falling in their trap

Maybe we should do the Hawaiian thing
And consider our fur babies their “guardian”
What a bargain to think of ourselves their watchman

Their companionship in our home sector
Their love is our sweet silly nectar
We are their parent “protector”

Their playfulness is our reward
They never make us bored
We are their human “steward”

They own us, lets be honest just and admit it
If they were not in our lives we would regret it
We are their adoring devoted “attendant”

The safekeeping of something precious.
Cherished chasing the unwinding twine
Priceless every moment of their limited time.

Moor Or Less, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

You sat in the same place where Heathcliff was written
The stony stares where Cathy was bitten
By betrayal, rejection, your story unwritten

The grey grimy wool of the sheep you were certain
Could graze without worry, while your heart was frozen
The cigarette lighter, pops out of the dash, red glow center

Fades into the grass. Tall they cover the rolling Moors
Down in the valley are all the shut doors
They bow in an arc, but do not break

Your heart shattered in Ted’s frigid wake
The gusty wind your small frame will take
The lamb’s black iris launched you into space

I see the disconcerting look on your face
Your oven is awaiting to take it’s place
Were the Moors really your solace

To escape your empty broken palace
Will the winds stop, or blow stronger
Will your poems live longer and longer?

Clocks consume, without a care
Matters not, that you’re not there
The Moorish winds, were never fair.

Were you a wishful candle that could not handle
Heathcliff leaving, Ted left in scandal
Were you hoping the winds would extinguish you?
(end)

This is an ode poem to Sylvia Plath’s Poem ” Wuthering Heights”.
https://allpoetry.com/Wuthering-Heights

It is more about Plath’s love of the Yorkshire rolling hills Moors and how she describes them in her poem. But I also tied it to her tumultuous relationship with Ted Hughes.