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

Goebbels spared no expense
For his vanity project
At the Cuban sandwich shop

Bannon at the sock hop
Napoleon he fancied us
If his minions just stood up

Maybe he could paint
Custer’s last stand
At the Alamo’s command

At Stalingrad, the Nazis had
Barbarossa all well planned
Butch Cassidy’s last dance dead

Indictments pile up, inevitably
He makes excuses up
Glory in failure, ashes they devour

He is your “retribution”, a cliff
Is his ending solution
The vile bully’s pollution

Cannons and horses, troops as extras
Greene, Boebert and Rafael Cruz
Smokescreen these fascists use

Their power they abuse
But the sane know what to do
We will fill the voting booths

Epic movie of battlefield glory
That never depicted their true misery
Nothing but fodder of fake history.
(end)


This poem is metaphor of how Trump sells himself as a patriot and hero, when all he is in reality is a Charlatan, a fraud, in the same way that Goebbels wasted troops and time making an epic film about Kolberg Germany and Napoleon surrounding the city. Goebbels was attempting to rally the citizens with this movie fully knowing that the war was failing. It was all wasted bluster and instead of Germany surrendering sooner, the film became a call to a scorched earth policy for all Germans.

“For his vanity project
At the Cuban sandwich shop”

Is metaphor for how Trump(the former guy) sees life as transactional, like buying Cuban sandwiches at a restaurant for votes. He wants to paint himself as Custer, or Butch Cassidy, like he is some hero, but the truth is he is simply using propaganda in the same way Hitler’s real reason for starting that war was because an art school rejected him. Trump is only running for the same reason he ran the first time, to keep himself out of prison. And like any bully to get even with anyone who he thinks has slighted him.

Kolberg was an epic movie made by Joseph Goebbels that used over 100,000 German troops as extras to play Napoleon’s troops and German troops depicting the siege of the German city of Kolberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolberg_(film)

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

The Rockies now sharp and jagged
The shark’s tooth, arrowhead ragged
Will be smoothed over in time

Mushroom dome or maybe moors
Rolling smooth rain and wind
The earthquake’s great equalizer

Frozen Ginsu apt to cut through
Solid rock sliding down to
The valley below, a glacier so slow

Creating canyons from river patterns
Diversifying over millions of years
Raging eye of hurricane, beaches bane

Makes up most of me and you.

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

Green shoestring
Curly fries, strangle
Any branch or iron gate
Dangle swirly straw
Slinky toy phone cord
Of some rotary phone
You grip and climb
Twist and bind
Choke a vine
Wrath of wine
Sweat pea is mine
Passionflower fine
No longer mine
You heard it through
Would you be
My clock spring.
(end)

“No longer mine
You heard it through
Would you be”
^^^^^^^^^ The above stanza is an allusion to Marvin Gay’s rendition of “Heard It Through The Grapevine”.

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

At slow speed they lumber by
Not moving at all they do not try

Yellow reflective on asphalt black
In pitch of dark that cuts no slack
The miles endless, I can’t turn back

Stationary moon hovers above
It follows me, like a stalker’s glove

High beams halogen, in apposing lane
Blinding my eyes to the direction I’ve paved
Faster my speed, the signs now allow

Can I make it home, I don’t know how
Now they are solid, I cannot cross
I’ve come to a curve, control I’ve lost

Swerve and jerk, back to the right
Behind me now, red and blue lights

Over to the shoulder I slow and stop
I breath into my hand before I talk to the cop
For an excuse, I begin to shop

In a hospital bed I wake up
The officer looming and wants to talk

I never made it, to the side of the street
The part of stopping was just a dream
Head on collision I heard no screams

Out of the fog I look up in pain
The officer was reading me
My rights again

4 lives expired at my hand
Despite all my promises
I’d never do that again.
(end)

DISCLAIMER: I have never had a DUI or DWI. I did get a roadside test after leaving a bar in my early 20s long ago, but passed. But that scare of almost getting arrested made me never touch a drop, not even a sip and drive again. After that night I had someone drive me to the bar, or took a cab or drive me home.

This poem is basically saying, don’t stupidly think you can handle your alcohol. You can make it home many times and fool yourself, but then that one time you think you are fine, you get pulled over, or worse, you kill someone. 

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

As you sit here and read
This poem as you see
The zeros and ones brought to thee

Was because of scientific method

The reason Polio is scarce to gone
Is because the scientists were not wrong
And the people listened to them back then

Was because of scientific method

If you think evolution is not true
Then what is of the flu
It changes every season

And evolution is the reason

When it comes to climate change
Deniers are insane, the experts are in consensus
Denial is dangerous and pointless

In Miami beaches this week
Ocean waters temperatures hit record peak
Making the sea life get more weak

Record heatwaves across the globe
The science clearly shows
We are headed to death throws

The planet will be fine
But to us it won’t be kind
It will make us turn to war

Over resources more and more

Enemies and friends alike
Have nukes each other can strike
Extinction will be our prize.

If we ignore the facts and lie

To ourselves.
(end)

Don’t Hand Me That, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Don’t Hand Me That, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

To these sycophants who abuse the word “patriot”
Who insist anyone who does not, salute or sing
Are enemies to the state, blind loyalty their taste

Look into the past, and the German flag,
Before you go on you ignorant rant,
Of how it supposed to be

If you did not stop, in place, and salute, or sing Swastika praise
You could be beaten, fined, arrested or murdered

And don’t you talk of walls the least effective thing of all
When your dear leader and his cult uses words like “caravan”
“Invasion”, “they’re rapists” as if innocent people are an armed military

You are vilifying my REAL neighbors who have done nothing but good
Do not tell me you are not wearing a hood, because you act like it

Black lives don’t matter more, they matter as well
That isn’t the message the insecure sell.
White insecurity, under the orange turd’s spell

Frankly I don’t give a damn about your opinion
I am an atheist, sometimes I wish there was a hell

For bullies to burn in, but I am also not into revenge.

And your guns, fuck your fetish, tools of death you relish
And dare to call yourselves pro life, with the volume of firearm
Deaths unrivaled by our allies

400million isn’t enough for you? Would 10 billion firearms suffice
Or how about 50 billion firearms, would that be nice?

Don’t hand me that you are for freedom
Only to take away body autonomy from women
That is Taliban shit right there.

Please continue with your false victim endeavor
Betraying “tired huddled masses”, but Lady Liberty
To you means subordination of others doesn’t it?

Please continue your false victim endeavor
While I repeat the words of our founder

“Question with boldness even the existence
Of a God, for if there be one, surely he would
Pay more homage to reason, than to that of blindfolded fear”
Thomas Jefferson

I do fear, that you, not I, are the authoritarian, wanting
Others to be quite church mice, for your own vice
Your empathy for others is painfully underwhelming.

Wring your fist old man, childish fear of a changing land
The same voices of hate kept blacks in slavery, women
Out of the voting booth, interracial marriage too

You must have forgotten the separate lunch counters
Bathrooms, and Holocaust maybe? I have not, will not
Ever forget, such bane, a stain, humanity should always regret

No, I will not let you force ritual on me. I will not let you vilify people
I know personally. I will not let you forget the dark side of our species
It is you, of a mirror in need. Look, look at the hate inside you

I hate to inform you, but change is all their is, and all 8 billion of us
Are as finite to the wind as the floating fluffy dandelion and
Just as fragile, so the ultimate questions are these

Do you want to plant the seed of fear,
Or do you want to protect pluralism?
Lady Liberty is listening, huddled masses and all.
(end)

Fuck the MAGA asshole bullies.

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

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

The crouched linebacker
Waiting for the snap of the ball
The hike that never comes

The Olympic runner crouched
Leaning forward, fingertips poised
On the track, waiting for the starting gun

That never pops. Red and white
Fishing floats, bobbing, waiting
For a bated hook, that never catches

Any fish. A-S-D-F skipping G and H
J-K-L, colon/semi-colon, hovering
Fingers dangling over, waiting

For words, in the desert, that
Die from the dehydration of lack
Of motivation, inspiration, exasperation

Cultivation of nothing, waiting, starving
For a road to be paved, asphalt laid out
A runway, a tarmac, for you to embark

The construction workers on strike
The players union on strike
The fisherman on strike, airlines too

And these keys my fingers won’t strike
Is my ink well dry for good?

It is a fear worse than acrophobia
An introvert’s agoraphobia
Coulrophobia

Arid rigor mortis my prose have found.
Toe tags, on the morgue slab surround.
(end)

Another poem about writer’s block.

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

He comes home to hear pacing footsteps
In the bedroom, drawers opening, closing
In quick succession, to see her arms swinging

In and out grabbing cloths and personal items
Pushing them down with anger and a resolve
The suitcase gorged on her planned escape

She thought he was at work, but quietly in he snuck
A vehicle for her was now obsolete for he had parked
Behind hers. The doors in the house were locked

“What do you think you are doing?” He says to her
With clinched fist, she snaps up straight shock flushes
Through her face, mouth agape, “I was, please don’t”

Trembling she knew what was coming, was this it?

The band had just finished the encore, the fans wanted more
Outside the arena the groupies gathered, but one was bothered
She wanted more than an autograph, stationed between

The stadium portal and the tour bus, it was the perfect spot
Security had taken notice of her at prior events, with her disturbing
Letters, “I love you, why won’t you see me”, “I can’t live without you”

She was clever and went undetected this time through disguise
She was not going to compromise, a gun in her purse they missed
His goatee drummer, his beatnik base player, metal blond goddess guitarist

Followed the lead singer out of the portal headed for the bus
She wriggled between fans to get to the barriers for position
He smiled  and waved to each side at screaming fans then BANG!

Now you expect me to buy a being that gives me a brain
But goes insane, if I dare try to leave? That is not love.

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

My cat Kelly, a calico, a face of flow
Dark chocolate melting down her nose
Peanut butter swirl with fudge freckles

Are the fast food fries all the same size?
The raw diamond uncut still is by name
Does the pug nose dog stay at the pound?

I’ve seen prose and poetry just the same.
Plath’s “Mirror” follows no path
E.E. Cummings capital letters dash

We sing not in song in every context
Symmetry is not the norm in nature
The mangrove tree have snarled roots

The perfectionist may lose sight
Of the dangers of the Enigma Code
Manicured lawns are artificial

Did yoU gEt tHe
pOint?
(edit)

I want to make it clear, I have no problem with fans of meter. But when you have read as much poetry as I have over 30 years, even with the giants, you will find gems that do not follow a structure. I only get pissed at people who insist on poetry being one style or always structured. For me personally poetry is ultimately about painting a picture, and that picture can be a small black dot on a giant white canvas, or a Jackson Pollack, or a cubist. Or abstract. I once saw an artist that was so extremely realistic he could paint a Polaroid picture fresh out of the camera and you could not tell which was the painting and which was the photo. But please, that does not take away from what works. It is just like pineapple on pizza, you like it, or you don’t and that is ok, but neither are wrong. A pizza can be a slice, or a rectangle or a square or a circle, but all are pizza. And some like bubbled crust and some don’t.

Itch ever Satisfied , By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs27 on Twitter)

Itch never satisfied
Is a perpetual
Motion machine
The drive of a poet
To create another scene
Satisfied for a while
It never stays that way
The pen a giant magnet
The fingers cant resist
Better than nicotine
Next poem is on the list
(end)