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 .

 

 

False Perception, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

The monsoons
I wouldn’t set up
This way
From 13 to 25
Hormones rage away
And torrents of mistakes
Confusing a crush with love
Confusing looks with love
And the hurricane’s pain
Unrequited the ship
Tossed about
Like a ragdoll
Self inflicted storm
Cruel tempest of youth.

No lighthouse
To guide me in
No soothing tongue
Gentle embrace
Jagged jetties
Razor blades
Anchors weigh
Red sky they say
Cruel morning awakes

Port and starboard
Bow and aft
Skuttled hull
I have no craft
Lead balloon
I cannot tempt her
I cannot swoon

I’d sink sooner
This tall ship schooner
The plank is long
I’m walking on
The keel is broken
Rejection has spoken
I’ll always be stuck in
This doldrum monsoon

Cruel tempest of youth.
(end)

I know everyone’s teens and early 20s is different for everyone. Some have it better than others. I wasn’t so lucky in love. I was rejected by the ladies a lot. I was awkward, and sensitive and pimple faced. I couldn’t tell the difference between a crush and love, or mere attraction and love. So even when I did have a brief relationship, it was like being blindfolded and trying to drive a formula 1 car with no breaks. I had no clue what I was doing. I was as smooth as a boulder rockslide in an earthquake in my teens and 20s.

I would have made a great lookout on the Titanic though. Good thing about getting old though, is that you can get over it and learn from it and be wiser. But it sucks going through it as many do.

Acrostic Interviewer, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Surrender to a conspiracy
You black ravens hide in night’s shadow
Leather and spikes in the dungeon
Vesiputous rumbling silently stalking
Indigenous beasts on my flesh feeding
At 2 a.m. the owls are plotting

Pleased white night spotlight
Left dimming from grey fog’s blocking
And cloaking maddening screaming
The darkness sightless shrill of nothing
Help will not be coming

Cunning and stealthy
Underworld’s authority
The Amityville Horror

Slippery stumbling over dead bodies
You are the M.E. writing the autopsies
Lecherous gnashing fangs waiting
Voraciously nocturnal never sleeping
In front of you, arms, that of a zombie
Allegory. It’s the bat’s cave now

Plato lost his apology
Last is the hemlock Socrates drinks
At least it is over, no more pain agonies
The dawn reveals vultures
Hovering over my carcass.
(end)

An “acrostic” poem is one where the first letters of each line downward spell something, or across and down depending on format.

The title of this poem is an ode only in name to Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant” which is a poem about how she doesn’t like how men often treat women as market chattel or an object at a department store to be inspected before purchase, to marry.

But this poem actually was written this year sometime in late September early October in the spirit of the upcoming Halloween season. The letters obviously spell out “Sylvia Plath” going down, and the three line stanza spells “Cut” going down. “Cut” is my absolute favorite poem by Sylvia Plath. The the last two stanzas spell out her name again.

It is just a fun dark seasonal poem for Halloween, not meant to be taken seriously as far as her life other than a ode to her name and talent. And a flock of ravens is commonly called a “conspiracy”.

“It’s Easy, All You Have To Do”, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on @Twitter)

Don’t you get
A little queasy,
Uneasy
When a friend offers

You advice “easy peasy”
But then goes on into
A ancient Greek play
Medea soliloquy

You’re looking through
That road map of
Universal remote codes
You’re head is going to explode

Your friend failed to tell you
They were district manager
For the local Ikea
And you had no idea

You were making toast
And they read you
War And Peace
Swedish meatballs please

They want to help
Crack the enigma code
But all you wanted was
Pie ala mode

You just wanted
To watch a movie
And they read you
The entire Encyclopedia

Insert tab A
Into slot B
They turn into
A complicated mystery

“It’s easy”
“All you have to do”
Is RUN, RUN RUN
RUN AWAY!
(end)

I am just being silly here. But we’ve all had that friend or family member who offers you advice on something that should be easy and they go on to “explain” and you just get exhausted listening to a “how to” when you mention that you are going to boil a pot of water.

“Well, first you, then you………………………………….” and it all starts sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher. I actually just wrote this after reading a recipe my friend John posted on his page and it was long, and he started it off with something like “Here’s a quick and easy”……….

Double Sided, By Brian37(AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brinrrs37 on Twitter)

Your themes of love and hate
Being the same epithet
Herr dear sperm donor
Herr beloved father

You were mad
You didn’t get to know him
He morphed into the Fuhrer
The wretched marriage between life and death

The angel food cake
The frosting black snake
The baker lied to you
Wine glass filled with cobra’s brew

Punching down the cap
The cork bouquet, city sewer rat
Rotted plumbs make you numb
Saki, the oven’s hari-kari

Not disemboweled, yet quite clean
Dandelions invade plush green
Deceptive to say, you wanted to breath
Lucifer and God, both on the same team

You couldn’t face either
Both were the enemy and suitor
Belonging to the same union
Wedding ring onyx coal ash

But which one to join?
Torn between two lovers
Reviled, the tag team players
Not an episode of Survivor

When I was slightly older
Hess was my father
A high school biology teacher
His students knew nothing of Amon Göth

When not in front of class
60 orbs could not observe
Colleagues also unaware
The beatings I had to bare

He swam every day
In the red and white label
The toppled hour glass
Black widow red beer gut

In one old faded photo
Of me he held on his shoulders
I looked like I couldn’t be happier
But I lived in Goring’s museum

He told me tall tales
Of his North Korea service
How he lost three digits
And partial left ear hearing

Proud to be a Marine
Anchor skewered earth
Eagle perched magnetic north
He really did once serve

But combat he never saw
The truth was a bandsaw
In shop class, he turned it on
Distraction, 3 fingers gone

Desperate so to please
I was quiet as can be
When his eyes grew bloodshot
Slurred speech, ink blots

I didn’t know
What I had done
I was David Banner’s son
Herr McGee got nothing done

If it had pleased him
Under my fingernails
He’d have shoved
Slivers of bamboo too

Brass knuckle words
Intolerant of my sensitivity
Mounting insecurity
Why did he adopt me?

One day he left
And never came back
My mom lied to me
About how he really died

At first confused
Feeling abandon
Angry for that
Glad now, he was gone

The abuse lingers on
Held hostage by my neurons
My life his transplanted liver
Hannibal’s fava bean cage

I had to mind his drawings
My head in a jar
In cobwebbed antique car
Formaldehyde lily pad self storage

I can now only manage
The snarling growling
Howling rabid memory
Of what that coyote did to me

Fleeting electron smiles
In Whitehall Bay, I’d sale for a while
In a dinghy, he bought me as a child
Glistening sunlit waters, briefly escaped his bile.
(end)

My dad turned into a monster when he got drunk. His students never knew the real him, nor did his fellow teachers. But I was painfully aware of what a bully he was. It really hurt when his kids lavished praise on him to me, because that made me feel like I was broken. I know now it was not me, he was just using them to protect himself. Plath and I of course lead very different lives. She excelled at academics while I struggled. We both were raised middle class. Our dads died while we were young. But that is where the similarities end. Plath never really got to know her dad, but I did. I can however agree with her love hate to some extent. My bastard of a father did buy me nice things, like the small boat, I used to sale solo to get away from him for a morning afternoon. But I can so much feel her imagery of the love/hate complex with her father.

You’d have to read her poems “Daddy” and “Colossus” to get her imagery. But my dad became the “Hulk” when he got drunk, and not in a good way. He drank Budweiser, thus the “red and white” label, and the black widow hour glass reference to the red label hour glass Bud had. And of course the “Hannibal” reference is to the movie “Silence Of The Lambs”. My choices under him, were to be quiet, stay away from him, only play happy with me when he needed a prop to impress his friends. Or go outside and get beaten up by the bullies, or stay inside and eventually get beaten by him.

I outgrew my fear of him long since. But you don’t get over it. I still have anxiety and trust issues even 40 years later.

“Punching down the cap” is a method of grape crushing for making wine. People no longer use their feet for sanitary reasons. It is usually now a wooden or metal pole with a flat disk with holes in it to push the grapes down in a vat. “City sewer rat” is basically the dark thoughts Plath had about that finally and unfortunately caught up with her.

The third stanza again, is basically the bittersweet notion of what joy she was/is to read, but again, the dark side caught up to her. The WW2 references are about her poems, and her grappling with her German heritage knowing what the Nazis had done. Her dad of course, was not part of that though. Amon Göth was a death camp commander and subsequently tried and executed after his capture at the end of WW2. My dad was a bully, and that Is why I equated him to Hess and Göth.

So Many Of You, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

I was feeling low
A while ago
And wasn’t sure
If the words would flow

My mind was in rot
I thought my quill
Would no longer spill
The words of life’s thrill

Your anvil hit me
The bat did too
The poets recently
I’ve delved into

The smokiness, the heat
The cold, the defeat
The chest cracked open
The still heartbeat

Damn it, I wish it were me
But I didn’t write it, you did
You, and you, and you, and you
So many, so many, what can I do?

Oh my envy extends
Past the Keiper belt
Might as well be Andromeda
All of you write so well

This infestation,
Wonderfully so
It’s no competition, our ink to flow
Just go go go

Don’t you get it? I need all of you
You, and you, and you, and you
Breath life into that print
Beat it’s chest, give it no choice

Just do your best.
If you could see
The joy I get
Reading your works

Takes care of the rest.
(end)

THIS is an ode to all the wonderful poets, AND I DO MEAN TONS OF YOU, all of you, that I read every day. I cant say enough good things about what I see. And you all amaze me. It really does give me comfort to read so much and really see the creativity in all of you. It is truly inspiring. And many of you have caused me to respond with my own poems. I love you for that. Thank you fellow poets!

Left Unmade, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrrs37 on Twitter)

That queen or king
With the silky sheets
Left in in dawn’s rush
A ruffled jumbled mess

Separate calls part the pair
Toil in the heat or desk
Evening comes once again
Bodies tired linked intwined

I saw you sing
At a tiny club
Sullen notes
Sang of love

Pretty girls
On their own
You call
Shelter two small children

Stand tall stand tall
Broadway be anyway at all
Postcards from times gone by
Your songs gave me goose bumps

You can make us cry
Violin and cello
Softly sway
Teardrops on their way

Time is frozen clay
I wish it was that way
I wish that bedding
Was still left unmade

The story of loves
The shelter of decay
Time is the future photograph
Glitches and scratches and fade
(end)

This is a poem about the only indi/song writer in America I can truly say I love very song on her album. Lori Carson’s album “Shelter” is a must listen for the sullen/love pain songs, intimacy abandonment, loneliness, his wondering eyes, type goose bump tear jerking music. But not in a cliche’ way.

It has a very deep serious sound to it, I find very compelling and unique that I don’t hear in any other artist. She is one of a kind to me and for Lori to grab my attention and pull me into music I am not normally into, says a a lot about her talent. I only wish she had gotten bigger than she did.

Look Squirrel! By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

If someone berates you
Or bullies you
Because you goof, and giggle
If someone

Teases you,
In the mean manor
Point behind them
And shout, “Look Squirrel!”

If someone hates you
And pushes you around
If you feel alone
No friends to be found

If you feel like an oddball
Like you don’t fit in
If they call you names
That is certainly when

You point your finger
In the opposite direction
You shout these words
To distract their attention

“Look Squirrel!”
Bullies make me hurl
They have no clue
How they hurt you

But it’s till up to you
As to what you do
You don’t need them
Not one bit

Walk away
Yet if you can’t do it
If they have you cornered
If you feel overpowered

Shout these words
Louder and louder
I’LL BE MYSELF
EVERY DAY, EVERY HOUR

There is no intellect
In their actions
They’re insecure
Bullies need minions

If you want to sing
Way off key
If you have pimples
That everyone sees

If your cloths don’t match
If your house is small
If the porch needs painting
If you’re short not tall

Don’t you worry
One bit at all
Squirrels love nuts
Bullies always fall.
(end)

The Risk, By Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

If only
I were impervious
To the pangs
Of desire
If only nothing
Had ever
Set me on fire
If only
I could be
The leafless, lifeless
Winter tree.
I would have never
Felt pain.
(end)

E-lawn Mask, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

What’s the matter E-lawn
Are you afraid of Valerie?
Are you afraid of Kathy?
Are you afraid of AOC?

You were so gung ho
About letting the “innocent”
Back on, the “innocent”
People that spew election lies

The “innocent” people
Who use the “n” word
Like Niagara Falls
Use twitter halls

For antisemitism calls
We know, we know
They’re not doing anything
Wrong at all

It’s all “free speech”
No harm in the least
Except January 6th
The instigators did

Use this platform
To call for treason
“Patriotism”
Their “reason”

What’s the matter
E-lawn, not so fun
Is it, when you
Are the joke?
(end)

A certain rich person with space dildos got upset that they got picked on, and now they are being petty because they can’t admit they were wrong, and shouldn’t have screwed all the people trying to keep the place tidy, not charging more wouldn’t have hurt wealthier users will piss off everyday middle class and working users.

But just so the electrifying narcissist doesn’t blow a gasket. Here is my dis claimer PARODY!

But why would I even need to type that because he makes himself a joke all by himself in any case.

This post is not intended to reflect the positions of WordPress.com or it’s CEOs or any of its employees. All posts at this page posted by me are my opinions alone.