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

The discarded bottleneck
Tipped and spun 
Unbeknownst to me
It’s opening cavity 

Declined
And stopped it’s speed
It’s final resting spot
Over the floor’s air duct

Everything collecting dust
Half eaten this, a discarded that
But that was nothing new to me
Slowly, carelessly, and eventually

One snowflake, then another
But I didn’t bother
I’d get to cleaning eventually
But the whiteout snuck up on me

My crowed subway
No standing or sitting room
All occupied by slovenly
The roaches gleeful gluttony

Everest sized Hefty Bags
The linebackers had long since
Broke through the line
Brutally self inflicted penalty 

I’d become
The garbage collector
With no way
To haul it away

Then suddenly
An annoying noise
Whispering humming baritone
Nagging and pestering my auditory  

Coming from everywhere
High ceilings
Vinyl flooring
Minimal insulation

Soundwaves ghostly bouncing 
I paced around to find the sound
That was playing hide and seek 
Bedeviled beleaguered frustrated

I almost called in a panic
Someone to fix my H-VAC
Mistaking the source
It was the bottle of course

The vent blew air over it’s cavity.
(end)

“Helmholtz resonance” is the sound produced when air travels over a cavity of some sort, like when you blow over the top of an empty bottle or jug.

I am on the wagon now, have been for a little over a year now. I was also a hoarder. I let my house go, trash and food bits everywhere. One day I had dropped a bottle and it landed on the floor and the neck top ended up over the floor vent. But because I couldn’t see it, and because of my high ceilings and hard vinyl floor and very little furniture, everything I do echo’s in the house, so the low and noticeable hum from the bottle I could not see, bounced everywhere in the house and I eventually thought my heating air unit or AKA “H-VAC” was broken. I almost called the repair man but at the last second I spotted the bottle.

The “snowflake” and “whiteout” are not metaphor for cocaine use. The hardest drugs outside alcohol I did was pot, and LSD, but that was back when I was a teen, and I stopped pot in college, and that was over 23 years ago and I haven’t even touched that. I stopped drinking a year ago.

By “snowflake” and “whiteout” I simply mean losing track of a buildup and not accepting the impending overwhelming size of my hording, like as they say, boiling the frog slowly. My hording got to the point of not being able to see the floor, or much of it. Snowstorms can start out slow and then suddenly become intense and leave piles of buildup.

When it comes to poetry I am never a critic nor do I want people criticizing my poetry. Lots of people misunderstand why I take that position. And it isn’t because of any narcissism or insecurity. I have anxiety and suffer from depression, and can feel insecure and fear being judged. But that isn’t about my work. That is about feeling left out, bullied, awkward and I have trust issues. But again, that is not about my work. I defend both my crappy work and my good work. Here is why.

I do not want people thinking because I don’t take criticism it means I am insecure. No, it means I am not afraid of making mistakes and letting people see my bad work. I do not dwell on trying to fix a broken car,. I simply move onto the next poem. Much like a high speed photographer will take 100 pictures, but you only see maybe 10 of them out of the lot. I simply put it all out there. If I slaved over every poem obsessively I would be paralyzed and would never be able to write at all. I would rather write 100 crappy poems to eventually get to that one that is publishable. And with all art, it only takes one.

NOW that is not to say nobody should ever seek advice on making art. If you want advice by all means ask for it. I only say don’t force your advice on others. If they want it, give it. If they don’t ask for it, don’t give it.

I also do not presume what others should like, or how they should write. I will always tell someone when I like something or a line here or there. But if I do not say anything, I am not saying your work is bad. Art is subjective and I do not get to tell others a work is good or bad. I can only say if I like it.

I have lots of unknown poets on social media who have written things that blow me away, and also at the same time write other poems that I am not into or don’t like. So again, since art is subjective, I limit myself to telling someone if I like something. If they ask me for advice, I will tell them I am not the person to do that because I do not presume what other people should like or how they should write.

I will never claim every single poem I have written is a masterpiece, only a deluded person would think that. I am simply saying that everyone I read, and including myself, will write things people get and like and at the same time write things other people may not get or may not like. That is why I do not like being a critic, nor do I seek advice myself.

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

It was a conversation
Not a NASCAR race
Danica talked to Neil
About the in between space

The area of nothingness
Between the nucleus
And the electrons
The baseball diamond

One could imagine
A pea on the infield
Between the pitchers mound
And third base

Particles pass through
Everything every day
Ernst Rutherford
Shocked to his dismay

He took gold foil
And bombarded it
With particles to see
How many would stick

How many would stay
Most went through
He had to conclude
That things are not as solid

As we like to think
Now ponder this
Amazing fact
If of our body atoms

All gaps did lack
And all that was left
Was just the matter
No empty space

For anything to pass
If you took all humans
Today, and shrunk them down
With out the gaps

It may shock you
To know this
We’d all fit into
The size of a peach.
(end)

I was just watching a video of former NASCAR driver Danica Patrick interviewing Neil deGrasse Tyson on general science matters. I was already freaked out long ago, before watching this, that a particle called “neutrino” is so small it can pass through an entire planet without hitting anything. And neutrinos are passing through your body right now as you read this. That was already pleasantly blowing my mind.

But then he tells about this physicist Ernest Rutherford who conducted an experiment where he bombarded a extremely thin slice of gold foil to see how many particles would stick and how many would pass through. To his shock it turned out that most of the particles were passing through.

So that made the scientific community aware that even within our own bodies most of the space between our atoms, and between our electrons and nuclei is empty. So if you eliminated all the gaps, and just left matter, in all the atoms of all the humans you could shrink our entire population down to the size of an peach. LET THAT SINK IN!

Here is the link to that Ernest Rutherford experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_experiments

And here is a link to the YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxV92NPNy8o

I think he said apple but still, the point is there is still far more empty in our bodies, and even in the universe than there is matter.

I am not talking about any specific person when I say this. My cell is cheap, I have the minimum $35 dollar plan. When I use my home wifi as a hot spot to avoid throttling back on my phone, if I am in a voice space for over an hour the quality of keeping up with the room declines. Sometimes my buttons lock up on my screen, and it can seem like nobody is talking when they are. But I highly suspect it was more than my cell phone acting up on me.

I think in this one instance my opinion of life got me in trouble and not the actual unintended interruptions. I am an atheist, and I make no apologies for it. Many of my poems are skeptical and it isn’t designed to say believers are evil, but only to say, “have you considered this”? I think most human beings are good, I simply don’t think anyone needs a deity to do good or be good.

And as far as getting rich and famous of of writing poetry, that is rare, and while not impossible, it will not happen for most. That is not being negative or pessimistic. If a writer gets on the map I am always happy for them. But at the same time, I do not want to see someone dive into a deep depression, or gain an addiction, or commit suicide if they do not reach that goal. The competition simply does not allow everyone to be on top all at the same time.

I take this very personally because my favorite comedian, who never rose to Jerry Seinfeld fame, Richard Jeni, committed suicide because his short lived sitcom “Platypus Man” got cancelled. He was a very funny guy, but even as a standup road comic, he could have had a lifetime living even without becoming the level of Seinfeld.

Whoopie Goldberg said on “Inside The Actor’s Studio” when a student in the audience asked, “Will I sit where you are sitting someday?”. Her rightful response was, “You are all capable of being great actors, but most of you, if not all of you, will not sit where I am sitting”, meaning they would not rise to her national/international fame.

If an artist, musician, sports player, business person, anything, wants to shoot for the brass ring, by all means, try. But the top of the top, the people we know nationally and internationally, are outnumbered by the unknows. Not because they don’t try, or because they are bad. But because the competition is fierce.

I simply do not want to see good people end up depressed or suicidal because they did not get to the top. It is a very rare place to get. As a poet, I read many people that will never be famous, who deserve it, who could rival Plath and Dickenson and others you know. It may be your dream to make it big, but you still have to be grounded in the math of odds if you want to remain mentally healthy. All art must always be done first, for the love it, not the money, not the fame. I will not apologize for saying that.

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

I was that Carl with the pizza face
I could never have a Blair
She was out of my class

The girls weren’t nice
The jocks were worse
I hated my teen years

It was a curse
I never fit in
I never looked right

I was easy work
If I got in a fight
I always had to

Run and hide
I had no best friend
By my side

I was a minnow
In a school of sharks
I felt invisible

I lived in the dark
A school of piranha
Made it’s mark

I don’t want to go back
Lived under attack
The school of piranhas

Cut me no slack.
(end)

This is an ode poem to a particular episode of “The Facts Of Life” that hit close to home for me. In Season 3 Episode 20, “Kids Can Be Cruel” The jocks pick on a character named Carl who is wimpy looking and has a bad complexion. I was that guy, except his character was actually more educated and smarter than me as implied by the script by comparison. His character knew about famous abstract artists like Picasso, I didn’t know shit about art back then. I was simply scared and wimpy and felt dumb all the time.

And I longed for a good looking girlfriend at the time. But girls were not attracted to me. I look back at that now, and the truth is, I did blow off one girl who liked me because everyone was teasing her and me about our relationship, and I was too scared to stand up to anyone. I was an easy fight, you could knock me over with that “feather” as skinny as I was.

“School Of Piranha” is what Ms Garrett called the kids after discovering how they had treated Carl, thus the title of the poem.

I will say to the writers credit, it was a lesson on how not to be a bully be kinder to others. My childhood sucked, my teen years sucked. I am lucky that I no longer have to live in that kind of isolation and fear. But every generation has those asshole bullies and they honestly do not know the damage they cause and that is something someone can carry throughout their entire lives.