July 1, 2006
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poems
prayers
promises
thoughts
ruminations
feelings
yearnings
winsome reveries
whispers
and words on white paper
Normally I wouldn’t have two ElectricPoetry Posts so close together, but this morning when visiting the Non-Featured Content blogsite of the BXU blogring, I was very honored and pleased to see that Laurie (soonaquitter), the “resident poetic” at the Non Featured Content site, has “featured” my work in her Poetry Cafe column on that site. I wanted to give lip service to this honor, and I’ll post a few more poems this morning. I hope you don’t mind. In fact, I’m two months late with a “Video Blog” and for the next entry, which I hope to have online during this long holiday weekend, I’ve been contemplating a “poetry reading”. Thanks to Laurie and the Poetry Cafe, the BXU, and Non Featured Content. Below the “Poetry Cafe” logo below I am posting a few of my own “favorite poems” of all time. Unlike a lot of “Xanga Poets”, I have been writing long before blogging was popular. I began writing at the age of 14, and my original “readers” would borrow my three ring binders full of my verse. I’d already written well over 100 poems by the time I graduated from high school. I am slowly but surely transcribing and posting the nearly 800 poems I’ve written since 1967 on my ElectricPoetry website.
Learning Is The Process
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
© 1971 (18 years old)
Learning is the process by which we understand.
We learn, when young, to count, and write, and read.
Our little bodies grow with inside knowledge.
We expand to giant tree from tiny seed.
Learning.
Learning works to help us through our daily lives.
We begin to grasp the importance of each day.
We learn in stages exactly what we see,
From dark of moon to sun’s bright, glistening ray.
Learning.
Learning was conceived to follow us till death.
To topple down our ignorance and fears.
And tell us when we’re doing wrong or right.
Distinguish for us, what it is that nears.
Learning.
Learning flees the soul when it finds love.
Affection causes everything to burn.
But when the love you chase is fleeing also.
You’re going to find you have a lot to learn.
“Encounter”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
© 9-10-75
If I lie
And say I love you
If I’d met you
If I knew you
If –
The world is a wonderful place
Where we can forget passions in the wind
Read heartbreak novels and put them down
Allow ourselves false fragmentary freedoms
And forget the chains which bind
us to reality
A phone call in the dark can mean
so much in such short moments
Striving hard to love soft visions
As I sit recounting loves
Which lost me long ago
If I hope
If I cry
If I die tomorrow
And not meet you
Would the Eulogy mention
That you touched my life for
moments?
No
Rushing headlong into
Underground emotions,
Throwing cautionary measures
Helter Skelter to the wind.
Bringing myself to peace
And gathering together all my
If’s.
No one can blame me for attempting love.
Strong emotions gather dust
When wasted on past ramblings
And those oh-so-sweet nostalgic
Pasts which amble through my mind
So I will toss these ramblings
Earthward
Toward the ground and think
Resignedly about the present.
Will you be a sparkle in my life
Well, we can only wonder –
But of course I will remember
What a phone call in the
Dark can mean to strangers
If we meet
If I can touch you
If –
And I won’t have to lie
To say that love is universal –
And so personal also –
“Many Mixed Metaphors”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
© May 21, 1984 5:00 p.m.
As I stammer; hammer home the point
Useless musings must make sense how oft
Contemplative couplets
give me pause to cause my burden
Let us lift a heavy experience aloft
Now all the words well-crafted
Meaningless repetitious babble designed to awe
the listener
In the past the odes were addressed to somebody
e’en if that somebody were nonexistant
Today I take part for art’s sake
Revelation becomes rhetoric
It was to be a fathomless feeling in verse
It’s a bunch of words instead
Readings ricochet from my head
You are a chasm unfulfilled
I am the avalanche
You are the unbroken seal
I am the scissors
Now I’m afraid I’ll cut myself
Or you in the bargain
But I’m still afraid the right words
will escape
“A Few Words”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
© 4-3-83 10:00 a.m.
Other wild diaphonous spirits
Skating their words on the iceflow with ease
Leave me sulking in wonder
As I read their winsome words
And their rave reviews
These useful chroniclers of the human psyche
Seem to burst with creativity
While I seem to sit
With the burden of humanity
Sloping my shoulders
Could I but touch these spirits
By simply reading their words
then communication
Would return rushing to my bower
Setting my ravaged brain whole
The spirits fly on
Skating through cloudy intrusions
And I yearn to listen
So that I too may
At once speak with knowledge
“Unseen Memory”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
© April 17, 1990 11:45 a.m.
Years pass like seconds; asking nothing, memory beakons.
Was it just so long ago I traded feeling for a shadow show?
A million eons, countless thoughts I’ve weighed
And through a vast stark wonderland I strayed.
Pick up a rock, a mossy dew, a frozen drop
Will a yearning for unseen memory make me stop?
Seconds pass like years; trading emotions, quenching fears
Is my past a waking dream; a blueprint for some grander scheme
Do I dare tangle with the hopes I feel in time
And do I pull distraction into rhyme?
Stop, ponder this, a tender glance, soft passion’s kiss
What values in unseen memory come to this.
I see a verdant field encircled by a perfect world
I feel a dormant urge through which my baser
thoughts I purge
I’m open to suggestion, wherefore suggestion
sets at ease
A nervous nagging power; unseen memory’s
never cease.
Decades fall like pages, calendar hopes and memory ages
Was it just so long gone by, I broke the mold and ceased to try?
A million people, countless visions I ignored
And into an empty reservoir the thoughts I stored
I remember it all, though I never made
the final stand
I bid thee Unseen memory, Take me by the hand.
“Bubbleburst2000″
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
poetry for the new millennium © 2/01/2000 7:09pst
this cannot be but is, my friends and foes rejoice
a clusterfu*k of options ever increasing,
growing by the hour,
emotions worn on the sleeve get wiped off very easily i’m afraid,
and i never see the countless bricks i’ve laid
and can’t get paid.
a moment’s rest, the poet screams, just let me have some peace here,
and in a moment’s frenzy, the cacaphonous howls of doomed souls, deep in the bowels of envy, cry out in anger, easing fire.
a moment’s respite, and the worlds bang against each other in eternity, meaning nothing, and gaining ire.
a plane crashes off of Point Mugu and the networks drone on an on ad infinitum,
you want to have a good time tonight but get lost in cultures detritum.
if only i could remember the words, as the ages get older and more forgetful,
this is my friends, and yet there is wonder in the world around us ever more.
a sonnet to a waif, a few sparse lines which don’t mean nuthin’.
a visit to a mall store overwrought by smiling pikachus.
what is this madness?, yet a calm resides in cacaphony
a spare bright moment lost in yonder universe
there goes a hearse without a denizen
if bambi’s mother were alive you couldn’t eat the venison.
i rant and rave and get upset, but nuthin’s clear, and nuthin’s set
a clusterfu*k of options, and the showers get longer in the morning.
this love of mine will out pretty soon
and kittens will play by the light of the moon.
so when was all this supposed to make sense anyway?
“Insomniac Hours”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
© Monday, May 24th , 2004 : 7:30 p.m. pdt
red square numerals shining in the dark
10:00
closing eyes attempting rest
but the lids flicker
like the red square numerals
on my back,
cats cry in the night
soothing sounds like
cacophanous clatter
eyes open
red square numerals
11:00
shining
mocking, silently laughing,
piercing through my eyelids
up again,
to the bathroom,
dribbling
upset, awake, woozy
left side
right side
upside down
eyes open again
red square numerals shining in the dark
12:00
four more hours
the buzzer will ring
do I want those hours
to pass like this
?
the bathroom again
dribbling
dousing myself with water
from the tap
dare I drink a glass
?
back to the bed’s maw
open jaws nibbling at my sanity
red square numerals
silent but deadly
1:00
get to sleep g*dda*mit
rock a bye baby
sighs escape like thundercracks
left, no right, no back, no front
can’t breathe right
can’t think straight
Is this a nightmare
Am I finally asleep
?
red square numerals shining in the dark
2:00
up again, open the door
the cats are running
around the living room
awake and having fun
I’m not
I’m dribbling again
back to bed
back to agony
red square numerals seemingly silent
yet bleeding like daggers
through my eyelids
shining
finally
falling
falling
away,
don’t know if I’m on my
side back or what
goodnight
something cries out in the
night
the cat scratches at the door
eyes awaken groggily
red square numerals shining
3:00
up, in the bathroom,
a regimented torture
a final ironic abusive moment
sleep finally arrives
as the buzzer sounds
4:00
red square numerals become the clarion
time to go to work.
“Encounter” and “A Few Words” are new transcriptions and are not on my website as of yet. They have never been posted to the internet before.
Comments (9)
:shysmile: um…hi? Had to stop in here and say hello to you upon my return. And I picked a fine day to check back in. I love reading how your poetry has changed over the years, along with your change of views on the world and life. :sunny:
I really liked all of these, ‘Insomniac’ reminding me of my not so distant past. You are very welcome, Mike-I was glad to feature you in my Poetry Cafe! Thank you for the mention–keep on writing.
From the NFC side, again, you’re very welcome, Mike!
Hi Mike,
From a fairly young age you’ve shown your talent for writing poetry. Very sensitively and beautifully written. I’ve never been one to write poetry, but do greatly admire people who do this well, such as yourself. :shysmile:
Mike, As a result of the NFC post, I’ve uncovered your site. I’m glad to have found it because I really like your poetry, your style, your thoughts, and your presentation. You show a passion to communicate – not just emote. Your poems are bits and pieces of wisdom and insight presented as great metaphors. Thanks for sharing these.
Mike, caught you on NFC> I’m a subscriber to you now. As you said, it’s hard to find a poet that didn’t become a poet soon as they got their first blog.
Good stuff mate.
Hello Mike
Just wanted to say that I hope you are having a wonderful holiday.
Hugs
Kat
Happy independence day!!
Hi Mike. I love your poetry. It is so interesting when you put a sampling from over a period of time like this. It is fascinating to see the changes in style and mood over the years. You have always been a great poet but when reading your postings on the poetry site over a long period of time you can get a sense of someone who is on a journey and who is finding their center. It was a quality that I recognized from your writing earlier but it becomes very apparent when reading your poetry all put together like that. Thanks for sharing with us.
Hugs
Kat