Brian37 AKA Brian James Rational Poet…… My Poetry

  • Welcome to Brian James Rational Poet’s poetry blog

    Welcome to my poetry blog. I love reading Plath and Sexton and Dickenson and Maya. But to me, the best poets I have read are the unknows. The giants are great for sure, but the friends and locals and groups are a joy to participate in. I encourage everyone who writes poetry to be themselves. It is ok to have influences, but you should always in the end be yourself. There is only one them, and only one you.

    Let words be your canvas, show them the raw you, in all your happiness and sadness. Show them your love of nature, and empathy and kindness, but also make them think, provoke, even blaspheme. The poet’s job to me, is to never be shy or timid, but use every word in your vocabulary to paint the best pictures you can. Paint your sunrises, your sunsets, your romance, your fears. Paint your insecurities, your addictions, your successes, your tears.

    This blog is dedicated to my late mother Jane. She was my biggest supporter and never let me fall through the cracks. While she was a bit of an authoritarian growing up, that all melted away in her late years, and we grew as close as any parent child could. We had so much fun with our silly car games and rubber duckies, and counting the trees. And our wordplay games, and our thumb wrestling. And forget Yahtzee and backgammon, she always kicked my…… at that. I love you mom. I miss you horribly.

    And also my late best friend ever, Bob. He unfortunately passed away in 2017. He lived in Australia, he was a science geek, and he taught me a lot about debate, and some science. I can only grasp overall concepts, not real nitty gritty details. But he most importantly made me feel comfortable in my own skin. I miss you too Bob.

    Then there is this annoying guy from Okleeee homa, who says “tators”, and “videeeaaaa” instead of “video”. And don’t get John started on banjos. He is my best friend and he is always there for me, and I love that redneck.

    And also Dwayne, Stacey and Vicki. You saved my life all of you. Thank you.

    All poetry posted by me on this website is attached to RationalPoet@brianrrs37, handle “RationalPoet” on Twitter ,as well as “Brian James Rational Poet” on Facebook/ META. And is subject to copywrite on all my pages.

    A Special thanks to Brian Sapient of Rational Responders http://www.rationalresponders.com for hosting my poetry thread for so long. Thank you.

    AND….. YOU are more than welcome to share this link on your social media. Especially Meta and Twitter, but your own social media too. Any help bringing traffic here is more than welcome. THANK YOU. You may not publish individual poems without my express permission. Any links to my poetry must be credited to me.

    This poetry blog may contain some material that may be considered sensitive to some viewers. Reader discretion advised.

    Now, everyone, grab your popcorn, glass of wine, and watch me make a fool of myself. Enjoy.

    HEADS UP….. THERE ARE PEOPLE MIMICKING MY TWITTER ACCOUNTS……

    I only have two Twitter/X accounts. Twitter has now changed it’s name to “X”. So all poetry in this site referencing Twitter is also including the new name “X”.

    “RationalPoet@brianrrs37”
    AND
    “Brian@rationalpoet37”

    I have also joined Facebook/META poetry group “Facebook Poetry Society” Under “Brian James Rational Poet”

    Also I just joined http://www.allpoetry.com under the user name “RationalPoet37”

    THERE ARE MORE PAGES. WHEN YOU GET TO THE BOTTOM OF EACH PAGE, in mice print….. It says “Next Page”. <—-CLICK ON THAT.

    NEW EDIT………


    A special thanks to Zaylen of “Okay Atheists” on the Discord app, for allowing me to guest host this poetry reading available on their YouTube channel originally aired 5/22/23. Here is the link
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_ikCkc7lWE

    If you want to leave a comment to any poem, click on the BOLD title of the poem first, scroll to the bottom of the poem, and you should see a field to leave the comment in.

    UPDATE EDIT AS OF 11/13/2024. I have a new account at Bluesky Soical under the handle @rationalpoet37.bsky.social .

     

     

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  • Acrostic Bullies

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

    Moving back in time
    America in decline
    Grifter on the make
    America cannot shake

    Masked as patriotism
    All to cause a schism
    Gone is rational thought
    Abusive sycophants sought

    Got nothing but vile lies
    Over power grab that denies
    Political party that tries

    Masters of disguise
    After destroying public trust
    Going all or bust
    Arsenic is their lust

    Molded out of hate
    Antagonizing bait
    Goebbels loves their trait
    A democracy meets it’s fate.

  • Just A Little Dash

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

    Sing, sing a psalm, sing out loud
    Sing of rocks and stones, sing of babies
    And bones, smash, smash as the verse goes

    137 9, Dashing them against rocks is fine
    And if you are the Pharaoh’s spawn your mine
    I’ll kill them all in due time

    And besides the 8 on the boat, the rest met their fate
    40 days of deluge, in a rage, I opened the flood gates
    Toddlers, pregnant women, kids, innocent mates

    Swallowed salt water and filled their lungs
    Hypoxia and death oh what fun
    Numbers 31-7 kill all the males, in the trails

    Pave the path, spare no wrath, take their spoils
    Keep the women and the kids as prizes
    If beautiful no matter their sizes

    If your daughter be deflowered
    Before she is bartered off
    The rapist is to pay a fine

    No jail time, and dad, if mad
    Can force this perpetrator
    Into matrimony

    Seurat knew a lot about dots
    Lot knew a lot about his daughters
    He even offered them up to strangers

    Just a little dash of cruelty
    Inhumanity, insanity, vanity
    Psychopath
    (end)

    Lets be nuanced here. Yes this is blunt and blasphemous criticism of the Bible. But it isn’t a call to harm Christians physically in any context. I abhor violence. It isn’t a call to shut down churches, or have religious people arrested. It is simply my reading that book, and saying “I don’t see it the way you do. I see this when I read it. “

    But there is another aspect in Christian behavior that I do object to. Not from liberal Christians, they pretty much leave you alone if you leave them alone. I am talking about MAGA right wing Christians who bully minorities and have laws passed that hurt innocent people. MAGA Christians who want to turn America into a theocracy.

    You don’t get to lecture non Christians about morality if this is the book you want to bring up, because we will point out the inconvenient ugly parts of it. The parts where God watches or commits acts of violence on innocent people and kids.

    The bible condones murdering prisoners of war, then taking not only their property, but their women and children and having their way with them.
    Numbers 31:17-18
    Deuteronomy 20-14

    Psalm 137-9 Dashing babies against rocks or stones

    Genesis 19: 5 through 8. Lot offers up his daughters to men for sex so they won’t rape his male guests.

    Deuteronomy 22:28-29 Basically treats rape as a property crime for a punishment of cash fine only to be paid to the father and the father can force the rapist to marry his daughter.

    And as far as the flood myth if one believes it, it would mean that 10s of millions of people outside the 8 on the boat drowned. That would include people who’s only crime would have been being too young to understand why they were being murdered.

    But if you are a liberal Jesus fan, i can live with you. That Jesus says feed the and cloth the poor, tips over the change carts, turns the other cheek, loves his neighbors. Unfortunately today’s MAGA Christians wouldn’t vote for that Jesus and he couldn’t run on the Republican ticket. MAGA Christians would call that Jesus a commie.



  • That’s How Much

    That’s How Much, By Brianrrs37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

    Ambrosia wasn’t around
    When the meteor hit the ground
    At the Yucatan dinosaurs burned

    What did you feel in the year 79
    When Vesuvius blew it’s top
    And all those bodies dropped ?

    That’s how much you will feel
    200 years from now

    What did you feel when
    The Titanic hit the iceberg
    And all those people drowned?

    That’s how much you will feel
    500 years from now

    What did you feel when
    Booth pulled his Derringer
    On Lincoln in Ford’s Theater?

    That’s how much you will feel
    1,000 years from now

    What did you feel when
    Napoleon lost at Waterloo?
    Nothing more he could do

    That’s how much you will feel
    5,000 years from now

    What did you feel when
    The mastodon went extinct?
    Ice age on the brink

    That’s how much you will feel
    10,000 years from now

    What did you feel when
    Genghis Khan marauded on
    Mongol Empire now gone

    That’s how much you will feel
    1 million years from now

    Oh certainly there will be
    Lots of future events
    Long after your death

    After your last breath
    But the feeling that is important
    Is now, while you are alive
    (end)

    “Ambrosia” is a 1970s band that had had a hit song “How Much I Feel”

    This poem is pointing out the absurdity of fearing what will happen to you after you die. It will feel the same as before you were born.

    I fear prolonged pain and severe pain, but I don’t fear the wrath of a bearded man in the sky or the torture of a man with a pitchfork in the ground.

    What is important is what you feel now, but even more important, how you treat others.

  • Piety(originally written December 25th 2007)

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

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

    Oh grand Phallus
    You live
    In a palace
    Wearing your phony crown

    But atoms and quarks
    Defy your remarks
    For in the end
    We lose all sound

    The sun will expand
    Making coal of the land
    And with it too
    The myth you spew

    Impressed not the least
    With your strut
    Impoverished player
    Reality guts

    In gaps you fill
    With magical spells
    Wane through the generations
    Morphing into newer fables

    Beseeching is reason
    You can’t hold hostage
    Free from your shackles
    My mind grasps knowledge

    Transparent friends
    Fall prey to the truth
    Your god is not needed
    And neither are you.
    (end)

    X- Catholic here. I wrote this because the Vatican often sticks its nose into politics and especially with things like abortion and gay marriage and while I don’t remember what he said that caused me to write this, but I have had a long history of hating it when religion and politics mix.

    Now before anyone accuses me of bigotry, I have no problem with liberal theists who don’t project their desires on others. And my late mother was a lifetime Catholic and died a Catholic, and I love her more than anything else in the world.

    Having said that. I hate pulpit politics and I don’t like holy people trying to stick their nose into our politics.

  • Colonel Decker

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

    This contraption was not exactly
    Part of the A Team, it would seem
    More of the dead Betamax dream

    Not a bar code in 1972 lava lamp abode
    RS-296US, would you care to take a guess?

    As to what it is, more or less, I must confess
    It did do it’s best, 20 of them in a circle
    In the middle a dial, numbering each slot

    And for it’s time it could play a lot
    No, not a juke box, but a paradox
    Competing with the vinyl everyone bought

    A carousel with no horses, multiple choices
    The music could play for days, I was amazed

    Looking back in history, at such ingenuity
    Ugly duck, it never stuck a cord.
    (end)

    I just saw for the first time, and did not know they existed
    An old 1972 CAROSEL CASSETTE TAPE DECK that held 20 cassettes. Yes, just like we had in the 80s and 90s multiple CD carousel players.

    This one was the Panasonic RS-296US model. I was simply fascinated how the top of it looked like a record player, with the tinted dust cover over the tapes. But when you take it off, it looks like a round carousel but the tapes get sucked downward into the man slot when playing, then spit out upward rotated on the carousel to the next tape.

  • Tuberville

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

    You talk of poetry as if it is a slight
    A neutering of manly pride creating
    An inability for America to fight

    I am sure Shakespeare sat up all night
    And thought, ” If I write a soliloquy
    Will Tuberville be angry with me?”

    I am sure when Poe wrote the Raven
    He was thinking you were such a mavin
    He stopped writing poetry and gave in

    I am sure Dylan Thomas was thinking of you
    When he wrote his his poem
    About how his dying father should not be through

    Maybe you’d call Emily Dickinson a shrew
    She was all a buzz when a fly flew by you
    Robert Lowell’s skunks are your new perfume

    You talk of this art as if it is doom
    You talk of the artists as if they bring gloom
    You sound like a fascist that has entered the room

    Stuck in your ignorant vile contortions
    You hold up military promotions
    Over abortions

    Frances Scott Key wrote a poem too
    I am positive it is familiar to you.
    (end)

    Senator Tommy Tuberville is a ignorant asshole who said in a clip that our military is being weakened because someone read a poem over military ship’s intercom loudspeaker on a ship. FUCK YOU Tommy.

    And the asshole is also holding up military appointments to head up our branches because he wants to defund abortion to military servicepeople.



  • “Woke”

    “Woke”, by Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

    The new pejorative, the right’s imperative
    Their vulgar narrative, a bigot’s collaborative
    Effort to bully minorities, into silence

    They think there is something wrong
    With human dignity, something wrong
    With diversity, stuck in ignorance, they cannot see

    Their fear of change makes them deranged
    They look to their bible, to find an exchange
    An excuse to be cruel, an excuse to be brutal

    There is no reasoning with them, the effort is futile
    So they murmur and muddle, concoct a new fuddle
    Create a new cudgel, a word to befuddle

    But they are morally broke
    With this pejorative they coined “woke”
    It’s a schoolyard bully’s bad joke

    I’ll stand up for gays, transgender too
    I’ll stand up for livable wages , get them through
    I’ll stand up for affordable health care, doctors prove

    I’ll take a knee when I please
    I’ll shout it across the seven seas
    Of your hate the world will leave

    Petty are those of little thought
    Arrogance and ignorance are all they’ve got
    They’ll spew venom until they rot

    Their pathetic pejorative is all for not.


  • Disconsolate

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

    The butterfly dances and darts
    The wings of the monarch an art
    The tingles on spine when the love starts
    The pulse races, laces, graces our hearts

    As seasons do flow, blending to next
    The butterfly breaks out of it’s chrysalis
    Aloft in our hopes our love stays in bliss

    It all started with a passionate kiss
    The winter has come the butterfly gone
    Cruel is this time that has broken our bond
    (end)

  • “Collectables”

    “Collectables” by Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter/X)

    You call them “collectables” with such bravado
    Ignore the flooded market you do not really know
    An average of 100 a day to their death they go

    Today on your Facebook page you posted like porn
    The picture of your “toy” from needless death born
    Oblivious to the dangers that the experts do warn

    If you call it a “hobby”, or yourself an “enthusiast”
    If you ignore what a bullet can do when it hits a chest
    If you do not care about the numbers put to rest

    If you use the excuse that it’s not the gun
    If you still talk about it like it’s nothing but fun
    If you don’t care that school children have run

    I have nothing but scorn, of your logic I shun
    Sick is the attitude that an object has rights
    Long done with this argument, I won’t give up this fight

    To walk out of one’s house and to live in fright
    You wont make it home from the mall tonight
    This repulsive fetish obsession a blight

    I don’t give a fuck about the NRA
    I don’t give a damn about what they say
    I am tired of the death every day

    They are not collectables, it isn’t a hobby
    Screw the objects and the industry lobby
    You need help if you ignore all the bodies

    When I was a kid, my dad often got mad
    He got drunk one day and this is what he did
    With me in the room, a town house at that

    I was to him an inconvenient brat
    He picked up his revolver, and twice he shot
    To this day I have a lowboy, with a bullet notch

    I was lucky but many more are not
    Suicides take up the biggest slot
    Second would be domestic violence

    Those are forever forced to silence
    I don’t want to hear about your “inconvenience”
    Tired of your pseudo “patriot” defiance

    The number one cause of death under the age of 18
    Those in high schools , grade school and those between
    It that object you think is “fun”, leave it lying around they pick up one

    X out the days in the calendar year, daily mass shootings everywhere
    Words like “hobby”, “enthusiast”, “collectables” says you don’t care

    You are outnumbered by the sane, those who want the carnage to end
    You will threaten us, like bullies and cowards, pose with your weapons
    With bullets that shower, but short are the days you’ll stay in power.
    (end)

    Once again today I heard a selfish gun nut use the word “toy” and “collectables”. If you use those words that says to me you care about your own selfish fetish and not the carnage our flooded market of 400 million firearms has given us. I am tired of seeing the violence in the news. I am tired of writing these poems. FUCK THE NRA, FUCK THE GUN MAKERS.






  • Rage

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

    Toil Toil, my rhymes do spoil
    Caldron of lava the passion does boil
    Stiletto knife, blood drips in soil
    Dejected lover my plans do foil
    The viper in shade slick with oil
    Petals of roses I smell their breath
    The faithless lover soon meets their death
    (end)

    Serious Disclaimer: This poem is Hollywood, not real life. If your partner goes behind your back just leave them, you have no right to harm anyone for any reason. This is just entertainment. I was being a bit Shakespearian here.