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 .

 

 

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

Oh how exact you are
You show my stubble grey
My pot pig belly, my hernia
And that I do not shave

I hermit between your twin
I know I’m dwelling within
The master and it’s kin
The light you’re swallowing

The camera with no lens
Shows my spider veins
And my sagging jowls
And my crepe skin

You say you are truthful
But to a brutal degree
You do not censor yourself
For me or anybody

Ivory squares
With wedges pointing upstairs
Give you aid to face me with age
But I can flip them down

Sedentary sentry
Always lonely mostly
Except for that of vanity
But of me you need not worry

The prune is shriveled
Unvarnished you’ve revealed
Purple blotches have not healed
That thinners don’t congeal

It you sit there and dare
Say you do not judge
You’re just the umpire
Calling sags and strikes

Oh you are no friend
You look deep inside my eyes
You follow me until I’m out of your sight
I turn off the bathroom light

And for you, that’s goodnight.
(end)

This poem is an ode and a response to Plath’s mirror. “Ivory squares” are referring to the light switch plates and switches when I look in the mirror and see them behind me. or next to me on the wall, depending on which bathroom I am in.

I hate getting old so no, I do not like looking in the mirror. I have never liked my looks growing up but getting old and out of shape doesn’t really help that. But I am being a bit sarcastic here too. I know there is nothing I can do and the rational side of me knows getting old is part of life so in the end, I do accept it.

The one good thing about getting old is that you don’t have those bullshit raging hormones and horrible mood swings of going from love to lust to despair to rejection. When you get to be my age, you get to say f—– it. And that is a good place to be. No I do not like losing the shape deal, but nothing you can do about getting old.

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

What if he hadn’t
Given you those stamps
Would you have
Done what you did?

What were you sending
It was your ending
To late for anyone
To send them

On him you depended
Though you wanted independence
You had his children
And a mountain of stress

You didn’t want to be second
You wanted to be the best
You asked your neighbor for postage
Knowing it was pointless

Then you opened the windows
For your tiny little ones
Poured them milk, buttered bread
Sealed the door so they wouldn’t be dead

That fucking postage
For what fucking package?
It wasn’t his affair
That wasn’t your baggage!

Those fumes of sweet release
You’d put your mind at ease
The baker’s place, a knob
You turned that bastard on

It took you off to slumber
The postage of forever
I will forget you never
Suicide your endeavor.
(end)

This poem is about the end of Silvia Plath’s last night alive and how she asked for the postage stamps to send some letters or package off to be air mailed the next day and convinced her neighbor to give her the postage stamps. But before she committed suicide she poured mugs of milk and buttered bread on plates for her kids. Opened their windows so the gas would not build up in the hallway and house, and sealed herself in the kitchen with wet towels and tape to keep the gas contained to the kitchen.

Her life frustrates me because I feel so sorry for her. But the same time I am also feel cheated that she cut her life so short and could have had a full life of writing to old age.

If you are having thoughts of suicide do not hold them in. Tell someone, a trusted family member or trusted friend, or co worker, call a suicide prevention hotline or even 9-1-1. There are people who want to help you.

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

Kelly had a date
The autistic boy couldn’t wait
Always looked for her to say
The amusement park their day

There were two up to no good
One of them lost their gun
Skip picked it up
Shot Kelly, while they ran

Too young to understand
The autistic boy went on the run
But he had kept in mind
Kelly’s nursery rhyme

Sabrina, Jill, and Bosley
Wondering how she’d been shot
Obviously, went to the hospital
And questioned her to find

Skip followed the rhyme
Collecting things on his way
A kitten, seaweed, seashells
And a white stallion, the ride of heros

The killers were tracking him too
They had left a body behind
The boy has seen them that time
A witness to aftermath of the crime

One of the thugs posed of
Skips father at the hospital
While Kelly tried to recover
She unwittingly blew Skip’s cover

She told the killer of the rhyme
And where Skip might go
The stallion at the merry go round
The killer was hoping skip to be found

Kelly got out of bed
Called a cab and then
Told the driver it was
A matter of life and death

The two thugs had found him
And were about to kill him
But brave Kelly head in bandage
Wasn’t going to let that happen

She punched and kicked
Skip jumped in
Sabrina, Jill and Bosley
And the cops arrived finally

Long enough to distract them
One got away and ran into
That ride that pins you and spins you
Centripetal force is useful

The Angels won the day
Skip went back home to mother
A bright future for them together
Kelly couldn’t have been happier.
(end)

This poem is about one of my favorite original Charlie’s Angels episodes ever. It is in season 1 “To Kill An Angel”. Kelly volunteers on her time off to do day care for an autistic boy and often takes him out to the Amusement park. And according to the plot, you find out that Kelly is the only person Skip(the autistic boy) will open up to.

She would often tell him a nursery story, and his face would light up when she told it, as implied by the episode. Anyway they go to the amusement park, but unknown to either, are a couple of guys, whom you find out later had killed another guy at the amusement park, but the one guy had dropped his gun, and Skip saw the guy, but didn’t know what the gun was and thought it was a toy.

Kelly sees Skip, not the killer, but only Skip, and he accidentally shoots her, knocking her out, but not killing her. He panics and feels guilty and runs away. Jill and Sabrina and Bosley meet her at the hospital and question her as to where the boy might go. She is not sure at first.

Until one of the killers pretends to be his father and questions her at the hospital, she finally remembers that it might be him trying to find the things in the nursery rhyme, the “stallion” being a horse on the merry go round. So she inadvertently tells him. But finally realizes she had been duped, and gets out of bed and hails a cab to go to the Amusement park where the final confrontation happens.

One of the killers ends up being stuck in that ride that pins you against the wall and Jill turns the ride on so he cant reload his gun. The episode has Skip out of the mental hospital where Kelly had met him, and back home at his mother’s house whom the state said they would let try to keep him again.

I was a pre teen at the time that episode came out new. Having been bullied as a kid, when I saw that, I wanted Kelly to be my hero too. It is one of my favorite episodes.

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

If rednecks
Can say “tators”
If they can say “fixin”
Take a second and listen

Tweety tought he saw
A puddy tat
Can you, can you
Imagine that?

Well then
How about this
I’ll make up a new word
I’ll take that chance

“Pidders is what you say
When you want a picture
Of the puddy in it’s layer
Especially of a kit taaah

Take your “pidders”
Or many say selfie
Post it on Twitter
Or Tic Toc maybe

Take a “pidder”
Of your puddy
Playing with twine
Or chasing a laser

Or just lying there, lazy
Comfy closed eyes
Curled up in your lap
Late at night

Take a “pidder”
Of your puddy
Jumping around
Being silly

Pouncing and stalking
Chasing and romping
Tail twitching and priming
Their legs and tummy

Take a “pidder”
Of your puddy
Share it with the world
Make everyone happy.
(end)

I made up a new word “pidder”. It means to take a picture of your puddy cat, especially your kitten.

Come With Me, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

“Come with me
If you want to live”
But Arnold’s too old
No honey to give

He don’t need no
Education
He don’t need no
Nail control

Ready made home
Just one thing
Standing in the way
Of this mason bee

This stubborn nail
In the wall
You’d think it too heavy
You’d think it too long

And those tiny tiny legs
How could they do it
I understand the pollen
But how is it so strong?

A centimeter here
A centimeter more
Holy crap he’s going to do it
Pull that nail out of the wall

It takes one not long
To become his fan
Watching him do it
You shout “You can! You can!”

He didn’t need high hopes
Or rubber tree plants
Just a hole in the wall
Ready made for him.

I’d loved to have read
A poem from Plath
About this intrepid bee
If she had not met her death.
(end)

This is a poem about a Twitter video I just saw where a bee pulled a nail out of a wall. It didn’t take long watching this to end up cheering the bee on hoping it would get the nail out, and it does. Hopefully my attempt to post the video here will work.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1580576551157891072

I really got pissed at the makers because of the cliche’ bullshit that if you don’t believe in God you are capable of the doing the worst of the worst to others. In it a blind man, defends his house from 3 late teen or early 20s trio of home invaders wanting to rob him of $300,000 dollars.

He had won a lawsuit against a woman who killed his daughter in a car accident. You don’t know this at the beginning of the movie, but the invaders find out that he had kidnapped her and was keeping her in the basement and got her pregnant so he could replace the daughter he lost. Sick and twisted plot.

Well when the female home invader sees this and gets caught and detained by the blind man, she starts screaming for God, and he says, “There is no God. When you don’t believe in God you are capable of anything” basically that is what the character says. THAT FUCKING PISSED ME OFF.

Atheists are no different than any other label. We have good individuals as well as bad individuals. But how we behave as individuals is in the individual, not the label. Atheists don’t want to barbecue your kittens or murder you. I get tired of seeing bullshit like this in mass media.

He made a great bad guy, because he was a bad guy, not because he said he didn’t believe in God.

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

Sunken eyes
Hollow cheeks
Oxidization
Rusting at great depths

Ghastly tradition
Demanding submission
Obtuse stagnation
Abandons reason

A living corpse
Decrepit thought
No query found
To counter such

Abbeys and Imams
Clergy and clerics
Rabbis and priests
Rust in the past

Living relics
Exist as memes
In the minds
Of hubris gall

Frenzy of feast
On top they must be
Perverse justification
Compassion the victim

Pliable beings
Ambiguous strain
Manifesting into
Cults and religion

Abounding gallows
For the outsiders
Heresy’s doomed
To fill all prisons

Indignation
Feigned and false
Taboo status
With flesh the cost

It creates skeletons
Insidious meme
Filling the chambers
Death to outsiders

Decrepit thought
Must be discarded
Replaced with reason
And cure of scrutiny.
(end)

Human rights are ALWAYS a given, including the right to follow any religion one choses. But like anything in life, religion should NEVER get a taboo status to never be questioned. Religion, is to me, simply another form of human tribalism which has the downside of setting up in group out group think. I’d prefer to think my fellow species is capable of reason as to not allow abuse to arise and violence to come out of religion. Thus I give no religion a pass on it’s group behavior or as individual claims. Our species has far more in common than the labels that separate us. Holy people only have the power over you that you allow them to have.

Notice The Pebble, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Will my name
Explode across marquees
Or fizzle out
In a wave of time?

A pebble I am
Will future eyes
Gaze upon my words?
Or along with my flesh
Demise will take?

A pebble I am
Will new professors
Debate my wisdom?
Or dismiss it
As junk?

A pebble I am
In a face of worlds
With meshing voices
Decibels insurmountable
In a face of worlds
With many headlines
And no solutions
Who will notice?

A pebble I am
Small, so small am I
Facing rocks, boulders
And cliffs
If that be the terrain
It is so the path of choice

A pebble I am
To many others
But count I will
The ones who care
They be the ones
My riches I share.
(end)

I wrote this long ago when I first joined a poetry group back in the late 80s. It still means something to me today. You have to write poetry first and foremost because you love to. Most poets will NOT become famous like Dickenson or Plath or Sexton or Mia or Frost.

“In a face of worlds” was on purpose. Basically each poet/life is a world with it’s own face or faces.

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

I take my feet
Off the ottoman
Walk out into
The summer afternoon

The sun permeates
The sparce clouds
Dominating them
Like Manchuria and Ethiopia

This heliocentric dictator
Oblivious to my itinerary
Seeks to optimize
My perspiration

A concert of code
Pretentious vernacular
To merely describe
My constitutional

Remis I would be
If not to over conflate
The simple statement
“It’s fucking hot outside”

Caviar words
Of Oxford level
Are accessible
To the layman

There is no code
That cannot be broken
Nothing fancy at all
About life.
(end)

This poem is basically a description of how my parents, but especially my mom, would use fancy sounding words with me like “Cantata” or “ottoman”, and also in my youth when I already felt broken and dumb. She was one of those strict parents who would tell you “look it up in the dictionary” or “encyclopedia” and it frustrated me. Her sink or swim attitude and getting upset with me when I asked for help discouraged me growing up. I was already A.D.D. and L.D. So I struggled through HS and even college.

But finally older and wiser and the all forgiving google search has shattered that fear for me. Now if I want to know where “Manchuria” is, takes just a couple of seconds. If I want to know where Kwajalein is, same thing. My mom used to call a foot stool/rest an “ottoman” and I didn’t hear that word until I was 18 I think.

I don’t remember when I wrote this poem, but it must have been when my mother was still alive. When she wanted to go to a church concert she would not call it a concert but a “cantata”.

Looking back at it now it reminds me of Blair from the Facts Of Life who said “We don’t go to dances, we go to cotillions”.

Point is, to anyone reading this who might feel intimidated by words they see in daily life anywhere, don’t be. Google it, and even if you are a bad speller like me, way more often than not, it will give you suggestions and you can find a layperson’s definition of that “fancy” sounding word.

All out conspiracy douchebag Alex Jones was sentenced by a jury to pay 1 billion dollars in damages for lying about the victims of Sandy Hook in Newtown. Good.