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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

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Guest Xradion
Posted

Scrambled

 

The sun sits on the horizon.

Ethereal twilight transforms

Into a dense fog of infinity,

As a star rises in the West

And sets in the East.

 

Causal chains are constructed,

Constricting minds.

They call it a free range,

Yet all are kept captive.

 

Flightless birds fail

To fly the coop.

They can’t quite leave

The ground.

 

A man sits alone in an empty room.

The window is open, but the door

Is locked. The man inwardly cries

In despair, unable to find

The key.

 

His pride keeps him

From outwardly showing weakness.

And so, he feigns security.

He is happy to be safe

From what lurks beyond the door,

Or so he claims.

 

Nuances of nothingness.

Watch the batter splatter

With its rich yellow scent.

 

When the shell cracked, the yoke seeped out.

The fog was lifted.

Chains rearranged into a double-helix pattern.

The birds glided away

On a benevolent zephyr.

The man jumped out the window,

But did not fall; the room

Was on the first floor.

 

The illusions of moonlight

Fade into reality.

 

        Breakfast is served.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Deviled

 

Look out, Chicken Little,

The sky is falling down!

The fox hides in the hen house

And the Devil is coming ‘round

 

The corner of the ovular shaped embryo.

It sits and stares with red eyes

And demonic life is born.

 

A bird not of a feather, lacking any,

Much to the horror of the

Chickens coming home to roost.

 

In its nakedness, the hatchling is

Far more hideous than it ever was

Before.

 

An abomination craving darkness,

Burning in the light of the sun

Like a vampire, draining the earth’s

Life blood.

 

I am a time killer,

And Macbeth murders sleep.

 

I am

A time killer,

And Macbeth

Murders sleep.

 

I am a time killer, and Macbeth

Murders sleep.

 

I am a wolf in sheep’s clothing,

But the Shepherd

Murders sheep.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Poached

 

Ivory. Elephants’ tusks, whale bone.

Leopard skin and mink coats

We wear.

Somewhere, a soul rests in nakedness,

Stripped of its earthly skin.

 

The sin of my kin rests eternal

Upon the tormented spirits

Of translucent fading figures.

 

Kill for sport. That’s the sort

Of being we are.

The bald eagle once roamed free,

Soaring height through our sky.

 

Now, it sits perched atop a petrified tree,

Maintaining its vigil.

Ad it stares towards the horizon,

Its vision becomes clouded;

It’s developing cataracts.

 

We cling to its back like parasites,

As we begin to invade,

Infecting its system.

 

We try to cripple the polar wing,

Never realizing it needs both

To fly.

 

And the lame bird looses its balance,

And falls from its post.

And so,

We fall…

 

 

We are the poachers.

Kill for sport: that’s the sort

Of beings we are.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Soft-boiled

 

Steel fences and barbed wire.

Metal gates, and iron walls.

Here, they are safe, protected.

Shielded from the world of perdition.

 

They travel like princes, in caravans;

The travel like money, in iron vans.

They are the elite, sheltered from

Reality, dwelling

In their soft-boiled shells.

 

They live in a virtual reality

Of video games and lush green lawns,

Of cell phones and pagers,

Of lavish mansions and internet expansion.

They are taught to love pretty things.

They are taught to hate the ugly.

They are pushed to the limits of

Their intellectual capacity.

They strive to be the best,

But they have forgotten who they are.

 

Unable to deal with the lies and the hatred,

The pettiness and the cruelty

Of friends, family, classmates, acquaintances

Society,

They seek solace in bottles and needles.

 

All their lives they have been money.

Treated like money, made to think

Like money, made to act

Like money.

 

Never allowed simply

To be children.

They are the spawn of the elite,

The soft-boiled eggs

Of our generation.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Hard-boiled

 

Steel fences and barbed wire.

Metal gates, and iron walls.

Kept away from the good life

Or trapped in prison cells,

They are the children of perdition.

 

They travel like thieves, sheltered

By the cover of night.

They travel like trash

In filthy foul-smelling trucks.

They are the downtrodden, trapped

In the harshest of realities, seeking shelter

In their hard-boiled shells.

 

They live in the cruel world

Of gang warfare and concrete lawns,

Of guns and thug hardware,

Of tenements, projects and ghettos.

 

They are taught to love ugly things.

They are taught to fear the pretty.

They have never been allowed to shine

In all the luminous splendor of their

Inner souls. They strive to survive,

But they have forgotten who they are.

 

Unable to deal with the lies and the hatred,

The pettiness and the cruelty

Of friends, family, classmates, acquaintances

Society,

They seek solace in bottles and needles.

 

All their live, they have been garbage.

Treated like garbage, made to think

Like garbage, made to act

Like garbage.

 

Never allowed simply

To be children.

They are the fawns of the downtrodden,

The hard-boiled eggs

Of our generation.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Coddled

 

Cigarette butts and

An old beer bottle lie

Next to a bouquet of corpses

Resting on the headstone.

 

Paragraph epitaph.

Trite, meaningless phrases

Come together in a pathetic attempt

To sum up a life.

 

So there I stand. Dumbfounded.

With three half-empty catsup pouches

In one hand, and an egg sandwich

Made of English muffins from that

Forgotten restaurant in the other.

 

My palms like psalms,

Aimed upward towards the clouds.

I try to mend that crippled wing

With a shoestring budget,

But I still can’t quite get

My feet off the ground.

 

And all the king’s horses

And all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty

Together again.

 

And I feel like the coddled egg.

Constant pressure and the rising temperature

Soften my shell until

Something seeps through.

 

And I gaze down at

That tombstone once again,

Realizing that it lacks a name.

And I walk away wondering

Whether it was me or this society

That lay inside the casket.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Sunny Side Up

 

The instruments of death

Play malignant melodies

The fog has nearly lifted;

All’s almost plain to see.

 

We’re all trapped

In materialistic values

Money is not the root of all evil;

It is merely the symbol we choose.

 

To denote greed, hatred, envy, jealousy,

The imbalance has grown too great.

Minds blown out

Of proportion by the desire

For wants over needs.

 

But I knead the dough to bake

A different kind of bread.

Take that price off my head;

It’s not for sale.

 

And while cold corporations cook the books,

I buy cook books and book the cooks

To whip up a different kind of feast.

 

I keep the sunny side up,

The yolk is the mother of invention.

I look to the truth in the youth,

And I always keep my gaze

Towards the future.

Guest Xradion
Posted

Overeasy

 

THE END

 

 

 

Xradion,

The Horny Druid,

Scholar of the Ancient Arts,

Holder of the Eye of Odin.

 

"The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."

-Wallace Stevens

 

"When at home, do as the Homans do." –Xradion

 

 

 

Edited by: Xradion at: 7/7/02 4:05:17 am

Posted

wow, nice theme... I especially like the duality of the the half-boiled versus soft-boiled... pretty creative

 

 

revery

the dreamlost

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

Posted

*backs away from Xradion*

 

I...think...I...have...urgent...busines...ELSEWHERE!!!

 

*screams and runs off, and will never look at an egg the same again.*

 

Cioden Darkeye

 

 

Quill-Bearer - The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

President of the Peredhil Fan Club

Owner of the Reply Raven - Enemy to all those who never post responses

Ashaman - WoT - Blitz II

Council - The Hunters - Blitz II

Leisure Officer - SFV Ultima - Beta

Posted

An excellent and highly original series of poems, Xradion. As I see it, the eight poems based around recipes for eggs collectively act as a metaphor for life as a whole. The poems sum up everything... Beginning with creation, summarizing life, and ultimately ending with death.

 

There are several parts of the poems that I particularly enjoyed:

 

1) As Reverie pointed out before: the contrasts between the Soft-Boiled and Hard-Boiled poems were brilliant. I particularly liked how the phrase "They seek solace in bottles and needles" was one of the few things that reacurred in both poems, showing how both the rich and the poor indulge in drugs and alcohol. The contrasts of the poems reminded me somewhat of the contrasts between Aesop Rock's "Daylight" and "Night Light", which I'm certain acted as one of the inspirations for these two poems.

 

2) The end of the "Deviled" (not underlined as EZcodes didn't seem to work with it) poem, where you used several grammatical structures to articulate the phrase "I am a time killer/ And Macbeth murders sleep.", only to end it with the final line "I am a wolf in sheep’s clothing/ But the Shepherd/ Murders sheep." This line of the poem, which in my opinion points towards the sin and corruption found in man, struck me as a truly brilliant piece of wordplay and stuck with me through the rest of the poems.

 

3) I very much liked how the different poems each had their own specific structure and manner of conveying their message. The almost psychadelic imagery of Scrambled, for example, contrasts greatly with the simple yet meaningfull narrative of Coddled. In my opinion (and I'm probably way off ;p) this abstractly depicts the complexity of all creation in comparison to the natural simplicity of death.

 

4) The poem Overeasy, which simply reads " The End", was a simple yet elegant way to end a series of highly thought-provoking poems.

 

Overall, this is one of the most original series of poems I've read in a while. One question: if my hypothesis is true and the series of poems act as a metaphor for life as a whole, why isn't love (an essential element of life) mentioned? Has it been purposely left out to depict the state to which our society has degraded? Heheheh... maybe I'm just being over-analytical... I should be asking these questions to myself, not the author. ;p

 

Keep up the good work. I would suggest those that haven't taken the time to read through these to do so... They're quite a refreshing series of original poems that'll go perfectly with your toast and coffee at breakfast. ;p

 

 

 

[image]http://members.shaw.ca/kea/am/wyvy.jpg[/image]

 

------------------------------

Almost a Dragon...

"My life is one big crime, I try to scheme through it." -Common, "The 6th Sense"

 

Owner of the Decanter of Endless Booze.

Edited by: Wyvern00  at: 7/11/02 11:03:50 pm

Guest Xradion
Posted

        Thank you all for your generous comments. I had originally posted an explination for some of the more "hazy" poems (mainly Scrambled and Deviled), but decided to let my words speak for themselves. I hope you enjoyed this series. Wyvern's interpretation is right on the money, by the way, but if anyone else has anything to contribute, it's always appreciated.

 

 

 

 

Xradion,

The Horny Druid,

Scholar of the Ancient Arts,

Holder of the Eye of Odin.

 

"The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."

-Wallace Stevens

 

"When at home, do as the Homans do." –Xradion

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