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 .

 

 

This is not a poem. This is a highly recommended must read poem suggestion. If you have not, do yourself a favor and for the love of poetry, read and or listen to Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror.”

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

Lexicons for both, as large as the universe
So eloquent, as to make Shakespeare blush
Menthol or full flavor, rocks with something wet
Numbing whatever respective nerves either has left

Ubiquitous ashtrays accompany their typewriters
Like the parasite fish feeding off the belly of the shark
To provoke, incite thought, agitate complacency
Create wildfires when need be, feared by authoritarians

Theologians, conservatives. Who have respectively
Become Plato’s Ultra Man, Wonder Woman, standing taller than
Mt Fuji, ready to do battle with absurdity, and purity
Ready to get dirty,

I could see them, meeting a juke joint, in some New York speak easy
Sharing a full bottle of whatever, towering over their glasses
Exchanging stories of the scars of their lives, their livers and lungs
Could tell such horrid stories of meeting close ends, several times over

And she would size Christopher up, eye him like a slab of beef
The zookeeper would feed to her, the lioness, Hitchens should be
Easy work for her. I should know, I have her complete book of poems
And it is as big as Hitchens “Portable Atheist”.

And he, he wouldn’t be so easily intimidated, he’d be a quick wit, maybe
A dirty limerick, as to which Hitchens would ask her to read her
“Furry Of The Cocks” as some sort of way to break the ice, but they have
Plenty of that, I’ know he did, I’ve seen him glossy like a Krispy Kreme.

And by her own admission, she wasn’t shy with the rot gut, from beer to
Whatever went well with sleep aids. Somehow, through all that self Destruction, haze, self medication, they towered over the most important
Endeavor . The core of what life is, the rawness of being, the sickness

Of being. And they wore those death masks daily, almost daredevils, knowing
One day they’d jump the Grand Canyon one too many times. And eventually
They both did. To say Hitchens wasn’t a suicide is folly. It was, most certainly
The smoking and booze was an Olympic Marathon to him, a relay race,

Where dusk handed dawn his next drink, and midday handed afternoon
His next. And Anne, I highly suspect, Plath was not a good influence on her
That’s the girl in the Highschool bathroom, asking you if you want to skip School and get fake I.D.s and get drunk, and race horses full speed to the

Edge of a cliff, with a sudden full stop as to cause you to flip over Arial’s head
And if lucky, that bridle is still there, with you dangling off of it, 500 feet
From death, laughing at what you almost did, as if it were a Playgirl model
With that chicken giblets and gizzard you both chuckled about, but she let go

And you didn’t and you envied her, and Hitchens, he sat and watched Knowing you’d follow, and he’d lose his barmaid, drinking buddy, intellectual Equal. He’d clank his glass to you, ask you to read the Jesus Papers then have A debate, disemboweling an unsuspecting preacher, reminding him that the

Penalty for rape is a fine, and forced marriage to the victim.
Anne would take her turn and read “Her Kind”, they’d empty the bottle
Light up another, and another, one armed bandits, except two, the other
For booze. And Hitchens would tell her why “God Is Not Great”.

And and what of last call? You know the endings of both movies.
(end)

They both lead legendary lives, but also flawed and very tragic addictive lives. Anne suffered mental illness of course, but she was also a drinker and took sleep aids. And Hitchens, while he could not really be called suicidal, he was a heavy drinker and heavy smoker and he might as well have been suicidal. It did eventually catch up with him and he died of cancer.

This poem again, is imaginary “what if” Anne Sexton and Christopher Hitchens dated. But they are raw reflections of amazing but very tragically flawed human beings. Now when I say Plath was a bad influence, I don’t mean in a literal sense, but as far as having a friend commit suicide, I am sure that weighed heavy on Anne who had her own thoughts as well.

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

I am going to sue you
For intentional infliction
Of useful language
And ban you from your quill

From the attic window
I look just down the hill
I see words, I have never seen before
In your garden, you tend so well

Somewhere under hidden
The cargo nets entwined
Blueberry, blackberry
Rosebush, prickly shrub

Ancient ruins
Of the white kitchen timer
Buried on it’s side
3 minutes to the Acropolis

From your kitchen window
It committed suicide
Landed in your garden, years ago
Barren of sunshine

Alabaster nasal dorsum
Pokes through the compost ski mask
Layers of tangled fishing line
Obscure it from your sight

Iliakό orolόgio
Dialing up my dialogue
Be it rain or shine
I’m not taking your quill

Your garden looks just fine
I am not going to see you in court
I’ll be a good sport
And let it slide this time

Your tabby staged the crime
It was no suicide
He pushed it from the window ledge
Yet he’s way too cute, charges won’t stick

Look at those shifty whiskers
Basking in the sun
He’s got you fooled, he owns you
Naive garden gumshoe

It is the cat’s occulted shade
You know he’s got it made
The jury stacked, off Scott-free
You know you’ll never convict.
(end)

A fellow poet named Lisa inspired this poem. It was in response to seeing words I had never seen before, and enjoying learning them. “Brambles” is a type of shrub blueberry, blackberry, rose, ect. And she introduced me to the word “occulted”, meaning being cut off of view.

This is an imaginary poem, in where I am in another house, looking down a hill, and I see her cat knock down her white kitchen timer, which eventually gets buried over time by mulch and and brambles and the nose of the timer sticks up out of the mulch but is obscured. The cat is also “occulted” by the shadows of the trees and brambles and he is the guilty party as to why her “sundial” or “Iliakό orolόgio”, is lost. In this case the white timer landed on it side so the nose would stick up like a sundial.

But this poem is really is about thanking a fellow poet for introducing me to new words.

Reaper’s Song, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet On FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

I wish I had
A time machine
There would be
So many
I would go back in time
Just to see them
One more time
Or for the first time
But that marching man
Doesn’t give a damn
About my feeble wishes.
(end)

Nine Tenth’s Of The Poem, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Once you hand out
Your poetry
It is no longer yours
It belongs to the world
They get to decide
What poems they like
What lines they like
If they like it at all
Some will soar
Some will fall
But for me
That is better
Than not writing at all.
(end)
#vss365official #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #poem #poet

The Echoes Of The Cave, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Soundwaves bouncing around
The canyon chasm sound
My isolation cannot be found

Below the surface, the miner’ s found
My buried body in the dusty shaft
Don’t light that match

It talks back to me
The conversation with nobody
Clicking my keyboard fervently

I might as well be, in another
Galaxy, there is no sound, you see
In space, they cannot hear you scream

The stove hood, two tiny lights
Of in the distance, look like
A close encounter, alien ship

Of a 1950s si fi b movie
And that Orwellian TV
In front of me, keeps track of me

My printer won’t cooperate with me
Jamming up, when
Printing my poetry

I shout in this megaphone
I let out a sound, like a negotiator
Talking down a hostage taker

But I am the hostage taker
And the hostage, in the shaft
That everyone hears, but cannot see

The echoes of the cave
Talk back to me, telling me
To be quiet, nobody cares.
(end)

My house has a very large kitchen/ living room. It has vinyl flooring and very crappy insolation. So it echoes quite easily when I am talking, on the phone, on my computer on Skype, or FB voice. But I get really frustrated when something goes wrong with my poetry, and I shout, and it is very loud. I have to force myself to be quiet. I especially do that at night, be quiet that is.

But the echo this large room creates makes it sound like a large cave, or canyon or tunnel, in some remote place, where nobody else is. It is a very lonely sound too.

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

Ian interrupted me
A minor inconvenience
Considering what he flattened

Like a steam roller
But he did force me
To go on another date

With you, laying on
Your crushed clovers
Your special language

And that garage
Full of tools, tools
You didn’t use

Blades, saws, things electric
Why not the bathtub?
Or high bridge, or traffic?

Or swim in heavy cloths?
Some carpenter you are
What carpenter uses park?

That medicine cabinet
Is mad at you
It had a date

With your liquor cabinet
You had your mind set
No sconces, candle holders

No cutting boards
Your wrists, were longing
You gave them not

The attention they wanted
But you, betrayed the carpenter
Who was not interested in building

You were going to be his apprentice
But you didn’t need one, did you?
You improvised, with four wheels

That never moved, with shut door
Smog that would make Los Angeles jealous
And it gave you that slumber, you longed for

Who was it? Who discovered you
Limp, ivory or blue, or both?
A China doll, motionless, pristine

Obscene. Were your eyes open?
The carpenter never used that
As a tool for your escape,

You broke the rules.
(end)

This is a poem about the suicide of Anne Sexton. The “clover” reference is about a poem she is laying in a yard looking up at the nighttime sky. That represents her positive creativity to me, in that poem. But contrasted with one of her most famous poems “Wanting To Die” in which she describes the suicidal as a “carpenter” only interested in the tool to do the job, and not interested in building anything.

Once again, if you are feeling suicidal, talk to someone, a trusted friend or family member, or call a suicide hotline, or 9-1-1. You really are not alone. There are people willing to listen, and want to help.

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

From the onset
From the first breath
The sickle chases us
To a variety of death

We fight in futility
This final reality
With vacuous labels
Of class and status

Since atoms decay
To our dismay
The futile efforts
We display

Our masks have names
In race and religion
Of power and wealth
And national origin

And in our history
None have escaped
This finite reality
All will face

The illusion enticing
The peacock strut
With fanciful feathers
Attracting others

Plumes of falsehood
Empty promises
And hollow threats
Divide humanity

Trapped we are
By this illusion
Painfully obvious
Is our imagination

A way out
Will never be
No matter what lie
We believe

From the fame
To the farmer
To the Pope
To the President

All who are, all who were
And all who will ever be
Will be swallowed by time
And obscurity

The cosmos
Is cold
Uncaring
And not cognitive

Please spare me
From your accusation
Of negativity
Born from credulity

Nay be I fatalistic
Or pessimistic
Merely from facing
Reality

Are there wonders
And happiness
To be found
Hear and now?

A resounding yes,
I too shout
YES, YES, YES
I have no choice

A kitten’s purr
A love one’s hug
I value too
Without myth making

The illusion must die
For the mind to survive
The sickle the victor
And will always win

It reaps our bodies
And our stories
Laughing at petty attempts
To outlast it’s dark robe

Facing the finite
Is solitude
Incantations
Are pale placebos

We dress
Dress, and redress
Our ice cream
Hoping it won’t melt

It does
It will
It is
Our finality.
(end)

Another poem saying we shouldn’t fear an afterlife anymore than we fear what life was like before we were born. All we have is now, and gap filling with super heros that do not exist, does not fill me with awe and wonder, reality does.

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

Remember that black and white
Rustic film of the two train engines
Colliding, smashing head on?

Would you believe 100 trillion particles
Are passing through you each second
As you read this?

Yes, you did read that correctly
No, I am not making this up
I am completely sober

Not high either, it was discovered
By the Large Hadron Collider
They call it a ghost

Because, to find it is harder
Little neutrinos, pass through solids
Like the apparition through doors and walls

To it, earth is nothing at all, take a baseball
And throw it through a basketball hoop
The size of our galaxy, to the neutrino

That is what we are, the screen door
On the submarine, the cargo net
The trapeze net, gaping hole in it

We are nothing to it, the neutrino
Is hard to catch, lighting fast
Like The Flash

If you like real ghosts
Not one of movies
If you like real smash ups

Sit down, listen up
Science is amazing
This ghost is too

Stranger than friction, is this truth.
(end)

I find this far far more interesting than old holy books. Nor do I believe in superstitious ghosts. But science always amazes me, things like neutrinos amaze me.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/looking-for-neutrinos-natures-ghost-particles-64200742/

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

Does it scare you God? That I
Who don’t follow you, doesn’t need you
Doesn’t believe in you, that I exist?

You must think I am daft, what a craft
You create me, then blame me, for the brain
You gave me

I get it, I need to be that snarling Cerberus
That three headed tricephalic, spit vomit
Howl and bark at the moon, in June

My lion’s mane of cobras, and boils
Pustular drooling, everyone fearing
I am coming after them

I know God, my life is meaningless
Without you, how would I get through
I need you, on my knees, I grovel

For you, pine and fawn and kill
For you, I am nothing, nothing
Without you

They don’t understand you
Like I do. I hear your voice
Day and night, you tell me what to do

I’ve read your epic manual, tried and true
I am your biggest fan, you know it’s true
I’d kill for you

Every moment I live for you,
I spread your word, by your orders
I cross all borders, and save others

So when they die, they’ll all be with you
And you told me, they’d lie to me
Trick me, deceive me, kill me

Try to lead me away from you
I’m locked in, I’m loyal to you
Just one thing God, FUCK YOU!

Oh dear lord, did I offend you?
Did I hurt your feelings, omni
I guess I did, but to be fair to you

I could say fuck Yoda too
Or Spiderman, or Superman
Or Klu Klux Klan, or Taliban

And what exactly am I offending?
I can tell you, and make it clear
Assholes and the non existent

But please don’t ask me to
Shed a tear for you God
You were dead before you were even born

And you were never born in any case.

I don’t believe in you God, I’m sorry
That bothers you, but atheists can and do
Live fine and value

The finite time we have, our loved ones
Compassion, empathy,
And beauty too.

I am sorry it bothers you God
I don’t see how it can
But so what, here I am.
(end)

I cannot state this enough. I do not hate every person on the face of the planet who believes in a god. This poem is aimed at the assholes of ANY religion who think it is their job to threaten us on behalf of their deity, whom by their own claims, is all powerful. When people threaten me with their god, I get the image of a midget standing spread eagle in front of the terminator shouting “Don’t hit God, you might hurt or kill him!”.

Seriously? You defy your own logic when you do that. Not only that, if this claimed being is so fragile it cannot handle being picked on, and really has better things to do, like cure cancer, or stop war and famine, but is worried about me saying “fuck you” to it, would not be a being I could worship, even if I did believe.

But again, this is not a hate poem, it is a poem about the logical inconsistencies in claiming an all powerful god then trying to protect it when it should not need your help in the first place.