We’ll meet again-a poem by Taylor Patrick Smith

We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when. But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day. And I laugh so out loud as the explosions make soundless scenes of war and prosperity as the cold war heats to 100,000,000 million degrees felt by all the citizens. Yet all I know is that the smiles of war and death means that I care not. And that life to me is a pathetic thing. Worthy of a laugh and a swipe aside, wishing it to go. Knowing that no matter where I go, we’ll meet again. But I know the scene of a jolly tune paired with the death of millions upon millions of men beings me to chuckle at such sin. And that is that, and I take no pity, and wish I was one of them. One that was incinerated in the ash of atomic fallout. Wishing my remains fell upon a skyscraper’s skeleton. No poetry, no being. No love or laughter, simply the invisible eye seeing. Taking witness to I falling with soot of earth and my fellow man on all that lies below. And the restless who cower below this world will one day taste me as the escape their tombs. 10 to 1 not bad odds, if ya know what I mean. Ahh life, such a waste. So I laugh in the midst of clouds that are made by men, and bathe in the temperatures where life doth not exists. Amen, amen, let us dwell in our sin, and smile upon a brighter day where the nuclear explosions light the way.

-Taylor Patrick Smith, copyright

Callouses

Anyone who has done enough manual labor with his or her hands knows about callouses. They form on the tips of fingers for guitar players, certain areas of the palms for weight lifters, ditch diggers, and at the meeting point of hand and finger on almost everyone who knows what callouses feel like. Also nearly every person grows very sullen callouses all over their feet depending on athletics, shoe wear, employment, and general walking habits.

The word spawns from the latin, callosus; meaning hard-skinned. The word secondary meaning is showing or having insensitivity of cruelness. I have a very calloused being. I have known death, lose of love, lose of faith, lose of hope, disregard, rejection, and a general distain for life. And over the previous years each cut after the first to my joy in life has developed a calloused heart. But anyone who has had calloused hands before knows that all callouses fail. The dead skin bulges due to the new skin underneath and by picking or continual use of the hands the dead callous is ripped off, showing new skin.

Your hands are vulnerable again. Your heart is vulnerable again. After so long the callouses of his or her face, the letters, the pictures, the songs, the memories, the guard and insensitivity to these things dies off; and you are left, vulnerable. Open. So you go back to life. And say you walk into the gym and grab the 110 barbell and start to do bicep curls, your hands hurt. You can’t finish all your sets. You give up, and go home. While at home you look a poem you wrote yesterday, about what lies underneath all that calloused lose, that trite heart. And you are vulnerable, and it hurts. And you think about her, and the pain that departed. And the callous that blocks such emotion is gone. But only for now.

Over the next week you forget her, detach yourself. And you resume your life. Increase your weight. Write more without feeling pity for the self. You are fine. And the hardened heart, as well as the skin, toughens. And each attempt to penetrate to the new skin, what lies underneath, is refuted by the body and soul’s defense systems. Until one night it rips free, and you feel pain. Again. And again. And again.

40 Cent Package Pasta- a poem by Taylor Patrick Smith

40 Cent Pasta Package-Poem

His 40 cent package of pasta was slathered in 10 cent olive oil, and 15 cent ketchup. A fork, of which he do not own, clanked with the pure white ceramic bowl-plate combination. This way the user did not have to invest in an unnecessary multitude of surfaces to eat off, simply one. One lonely dish, that contained anything the buyer may need, in order for him or herself to feed. It was sad, he thought, as he drank copious amounts of sangria that was poured from a 55 cent plastic box carton. All in all this dinner, which had been the only food he consumed from his 2:30 PM rise until tonight, was about 45 cents, when divided from the dinner’s packaged entirety. It was sad, or would have been, had the author of this meal left any room in his self excavated heart for that emotion to play truth. He though, I think this would be sad. I think someone would cry over these empty, oily, and smudge borrowed dishes. But I really can’t say. For I cannot interpret the thoughts of one that I am not. Does that make sense? Should I write that down? It’s poetic no? He wondered if his poverty was poetic or just, sad. But he could not really say, for neither words withstood the tests of fate in his life. He used to believe in things, in life, in life without strife or discourse for use of force to make himself go to sleep, and simply just lay. That last bit sounded good, he though, perhaps I should write that down? Eh, who would care to read it. How can I even get it published. Just stand on the streets? And scream pay me for my poetry? No I don’t think that would work. Besides why go outside, when it is so safe in here. He did not have fear for the outside world. For there once was a time where he was willing to shed a tear or two, in order to appear humane, and become immune to the evil of life. But no matter how many nights he cried, he still felt alone. So he stopped. And stared, and quit his job, and glared at lovers who walked hand in hand in the streets. A foreign land was his home, where he spoke a language that was in this country of its very own. No one could speak to him in a tongue he recognized, and this was the aim, and the start of his self demise. And even still he just sat. And thought, whoever is narrating my life I hope loses hope fast, like I have. And can smile at a void and shallow abyss. Shallow abyss? does that even make sense. Most nights were spent, in such ways. Contemplating things that didn’t matter. He had a stash of old books that he liked to read and re read. And did so, until his vision turned to dreams, dreams filled with 40 cent packages of pasta slathered in 25 cent olive oil, and 50 cent ketchup. Dreams that he no longer knew were not true. So day in, and day out, that’s what he did. Nothing, but sat, and thought non sense, and read and re read. And he did so until 40 years later, he was dead.

-Taylor Patrick Smith, copyright

A poem about death

I wrote a poem yesterday. It is entitled “Art Though Ware Of-”.

Art thou ware of evanescent sense,

Will of morrow’s breathe to ne’er take flight.

Woebegone adherence makes being worth nae more than pence.

Will of morrow’s waking eye to ne’er witness light.

Wherefore art mine prismatic waking hours.

Hath eluded I essence of my existence.

Gaze upon sterling Swiss flowers,

And bow in mien of loving lord, as fate closes its distance.

-Taylor Patrick Smith, Copyright

The poem describes my dissatisfaction with life. Particularly my will to no longer live. I will not commit suicide, for the sake of those who love me. Although it has been seriously considered, this is true, several times. For some reason I became very cynical, worldly, and open minded in my late teenage years, despite my rather sheltered upbringing. This resulted in me, after losing family, friends, and girls I loved, to death or simple loss, deciding I care not for life. Rather I have no fear of death. If someone threatened to kill me I would say prove it, and make it quick. I’m not going to go cliff diving absent of parachute, or try and stop a train (as stated above) but for the time being, I do not look forward to life. Marriage I fear will be utterly macabre. I fear I will be a bad misguided father as my parents were/are to me. I fear I will grow lonely, unaccomplished, unsatisfied, and fall back into a shell I broke from just a couple years ago. I fear routine and boredom. And both have already set pace with my young life. I work, despise the idea of school, lift weights endlessly, have few real friends, and watch the same TV shows. I have no love interests due to the lack of attraction for 90% of the female race. No I am not gay, don’t get any ideas. I despise most people for some reason or another. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of people. I have good friends, good siblings, all of that jazz and I care for them deeply. But they are not a majority. Anyway for some reasons I throw on a smile and laugh because I can’t help it. I walk through a crowd and no one seems to see me, take notice. I listen to poets sing songs of the broken heart, songs I sing as well, that solely bring me to the brink. I wonder, if these poets (although through song, not the read word) make millions of dollars, have wives, and sound really great, then what hope is there for me? They still feel pain, as do I, what is the point? Religions point toward their scripture, idiots point to their bank accounts, lovers point to one another, mothers and fathers point to their children, what do I point to? What do I look upon for hope? I have nothing. I have people I love so very much. And I have things I want to accomplish absolutely. Ways I want to look, things I want to do, places I want to see, blah blah blah, aspirations. But they hardly seem worth the day to day trudge of laborious and arduous tolling. Work a year for two weeks vacation? Retirement? I don’t know. I am in desperate need of a woman to whisk away on mine aching arms and to kiss away the moonless nights, but until I do I fear death not. And life seems a chore. Wrong, perhaps. Cynical, yes. Sad, of course. I enjoy life, but it seems rather silly sometimes.

My favorite words I

in honor of Eric Sanderson’s blog entry

Gleam

Sullen

Despondency

Quell

Hollow

Whilst

Amidst

Hath

Doth

Echo

Discord

Willow

Morn

And many more to come…

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

By God, they have done it. They created a perfect film. Well not perfect, but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind was by far one of the greatest artistic performances in every realm possible. The story, unbelievable! the acting, jim carry’s best performance by far. The shots, lighting, angles, visuals were phenomenal to say the least. The love story, the mess of beauty, the way it flowed and was told, simply spectacular. This is a MUST see and works its way onto my top 10 films of all time. Which believe is a very difficult thing to do. Two thumbs about as high as they can go. Go see it.

A subtle relization. Subtle because I realized this 100000 times before.

I realized I long for love, and have none outsie a philia realm. And that the one face that is brought to the forefront of my mind has been doing so since the day it departed. I also realized that I hate life generally speaking, and hope is such a devestating thing to those who have no hand to break there fall at three AM.  Apoet must pay his dues. It hardly seems worth it. As does this tolling life.

Garden State

I viewed the film Garden State starring Zack braff and Natalie Portman. It was so very good. An independent film that felt like an independent film in all the right ways. Superb acting, especially by Natalie Portman. The charter development of Zack Braff was not over saturated but still very present. A great film about normal people and death and how it can affect our lives, among many other things. Anyway, I recommend highly, go watch it, let me know what ya think.

Ye shall be the death of I

Attend, my adoring love,

And wallow in my wake.

Selfish, indeed, tis’ by me

To hope that it is thee

Who takes witness to my grave, and not I to yours.

Regardless of first strike,

The order of our demise,

If ye leave my Earthly side,

Indeed mine waking breath shall flee as well.

For thou shall be the death of I,

And all the lonely riches in the world,

Shant keep me from thy morbid side.

-Taylor Patrick Smith

The dilution of WWII and Jewish persecution

I am tired. This will be short. I just watched Schindler’s list (in my journey to see ever Academy Award’s “Best Picture”), and was very disappointed. How many movies, stories, video games, HBO series, television shows, so on so forth have retold the tale of World War II? I care not to research but a lot. And it became present to me that I do not care about the holocaust. The persecution of the jews. The horrific violence of a world war. All my life I have been subjected to this kind of entertaining war. World War II is NOT entertaining. But look at us go. We flock to theater’s, television screens, anything with a screen, and watch with smiles as men lose limbs in olive drab uniforms. “Oh the surround sound is great Bill. Really makes the war feel real.” You cretins (one of my favorite words). Thanks American entertainment industry for taking something as powerful as the Holocaust and our second World war and little by little stripping it down into a more seemingly fictions bed time story young kids dream about. Ya get what I’m saying? I understand by making it so publicized obviously we are educated by it. But turning it into entertainment, as we often do with tragedy and history (giving poet’s and writers like myself an audience), we delude the content and power. Adios, off to sleep. Let’s hope my next best picture, Titanic (ughh) and The English Patient obtain better content. Adios.   ****I AM NOT AN ANTI-SEMITE come on, Larry David is one of my favorite people ever, as is Seinfeld. Up top.