Utility Futility

On 2017110720171107 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

A woman walks into a bar
Trying to be seen for who she are
She might as well stayed in her car
Been ignored at home, not have to drive so far —

Then there’s the man whose words were said
Trying to get her into bed
Without that, he’s as good as dead
‘s not lying, man, the truth’s lost in his head —

We think we know, we think we see
Utility futility
The aberrance that sets us free
From sanity’s sobriety —

She comes home and lets down her hair
Her heavy purse plopped in a chair
She hates it when there’s no one there
Except, she doesn’t really like to share —

And he, too’s gone home for the night
With Brazzers and a Miller Lite
A mouthpiece for his overbite
This warrior whose never seen a fight —

Utility, futility
With shyness or temerity
We wonder wandering and free
As struggling bits of human
Vanity

5 Vanities – 5 (“Principal”)

On 2017091120170911 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

At eight, his cruel authority
Seemed all but absolute;
Our short-haired principal, whose rage
Was widespread, and acute

But who was fired, for the life
He led of dissolution —
Another man in education
Sunk in
Prostitution

5 Vanities – 4

On 2017091120170911 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

so many stories lost in ugly things.
the common world we choose to think beneath —
and so, we hear not what each echo brings:
remembered songs their lives to us bequeath.

a moment for reflection – just a turn –
it’s all we really need, it’s all it takes —
we have to know the tales, so we can learn
and not just substitute some new mistakes —

we should not venerate, nor should we scorn,
the lessons of the many come before;
and though new problems every day are born,
we didn’t invent hate, or love, or war —

for time will the turn pages of the book,
the chapters we will miss, if we don’t look.

5 Vanities – 3

On 2017091120170911 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

shaving cream odors

low chatter

men reading in chairs

weekly fellowship

saturdays

cultural passing

5 Vanities – 2

On 2017091120170911 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems7 Comments

Within the vanity of youth,
I scorned the ravages of age;
And loved the new things of my world,
And our place on the stage —

But now, the wheres I loved grow dim,
To fade out into history,
And young folks pass by in disgust
These useless things, grown old

Like me

5 Vanities – 1

On 2017091120170911 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

hershey’s cokes and cigarettes
for lagomorphs and testudines

once a home of comic books
and pulpy sorts of magazines

now it sits abandoned in
a town that’s much the same

a cracked and broken parking lot
and no one left
to blame

The Hindsight Warehouse

On 2017082820170828 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

Within this room, with its fluorescent buzz,
Are all the ghosts of what has come and gone;
The hindsight warehouse: "should've", and "because" --
Those words that empty failure tends to spawn,
From which few real conclusions can be drawn
Other than that we will do what we do,
And stand in empty rooms when all is through.

I hear an echo, from a different day,
And see the room alive with industry,
The work we did to find a better way,
And give with caring, and with honesty,
Before the wreckage of our vanity
Exploded like a thousand fading stars
In bitterness, and chapters of memoirs.

We mop the floors that nobody will see,
And touch the dead, who can no longer feel,
We say we'll stay, then make our plans to flee,
Reneging on each sworn and sacred deal:
From others our dead promises conceal --

Because we hoped, we ventured for the heights,
But it's okay, now
                  just 
                      turn out
                              the lights