Monday, 28 January 2008

• ElectricPoetry: 10 Best from the 90s

  10 BEST POEMS OF THE 1990S

  "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.

   

  "The White Horse Breaks Free"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  February 24, 1992 9:30 a.m.

  
  I feel unbridled passion
  Gallop fiercely, yielding naught
  Hurtling me toward bliss and fusion
  Riding on and can't be caught
  Slipping free from consciousness
  Into a bright white void
  Mixing pain and happiness
  A sharp brief moment overjoyed.

  I don't know how to act sometimes
  When faced with feelings dug as deep
  As yours, and when I focus find
  The crevice wide and steep.
  So open up and swallow me
  I'll switch off conscious thought
  And for that moment passion
  Gallops feely, yielding naught.

  She rides a wild free stallion
  Never saddled, never broken
  Never would she yield, nor stand
  For shallow love's lost token
  I will ride with passion
  Fill deep feelings full with me
  And for that sharp brief moment
  Feel ecstasy's eternity.

   

  "Holding on to the Half-Empty Glass of Water"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  April 4, 1993 12:00 noon

  
  Thinking back on the yesteryears
  Reliving too much forced fun
  Too many easy beers

  Today seems like such a waste of time
  A universe of missed emotions
  And a poem with bad rhyme

  I can't get close the more I try
  Remember yesterday and pry
  apart the decades mold decay
  I can't move on, don't want to stay

  Is this fulfillment, the poet asks
  Can't wind down enough to bask
  in assorted pleasures I waited to find
  With an eager touch and
  a turbulent mind

  The words wouldn't come,
  And I needed release
  I needed warm touch
  Believed closeness would ease
  All the clipped curt tight tensions
  I felt through the decades
  But when the words come
  they just get in the way.

  A year or so ago I found the answers
  So I dreamed
  A rich astonished vision;
  A lover so it seemed
  But everyone's got their problems
  And mine get washed away
  Real people are not poem-spirits
  And real feelings just get in the way

  It's not that I feel I'm not happy
  Nor that I still seem to
  So flatly exist
  But the meaning walked off of
  the doorstep
  Without waiting for one
  goodnight kiss.

  I still lie here alone and I
  cry some
  And no one, even lovers, understand
  I did all I could in a
  past time

  Maybe I'm past doing all that I can.

   

  "Full Moon on Valentine's Night"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  February 14, 1995 8:06 pm pst

  
  I think of you often and at times like tonight
  Your radiant smile made me feel so right
  I remember the nights when we shared so much
  A brush of your leg, a soft lover's touch

  I will think of you more as I lie here alone
  Words mean so little, and I can't find a tone
  I respect you and care for you
  Though it doesn't always show
  I hope only for the best for you
  Soar higher, never low

  I've respect for your wishes
  For your dreams, for your hopes
  I've never been a good romantic
  I just didn't know the ropes

  And I just never learned how to
       read 'tween the lines
  But as I see the full moon smile
       I feel love is mine

  I would give you the love that I possess
  And whatever next happens
  I will never love less

  Please feel happy, ecstatic
  Words just get in the way
  Oh sweet precious girl
  Happy Valentine's Day.

   

  "Large & Empty House"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  April 13, 1995 5:50 pm pst (the saddest poem I've ever written)

  
  I look around and see none of me
   A little of us
  A couple of birds singing

  Was it not so long ago they sang for us?

  Was there ever an us?
  Or was it just you?

  And me?

  Where do I fit in
  In this large and empty house?

  Where is my voice
  I could cry
  I could laugh

  Sometimes it all seems so funny
  I wanted a house for you
  I wanted to make you happy

  I failed

  Now you're happy with someone else
  Away from this large and empty house

  And since I see none of me
  I leave too
  The birds must be really lonely

   

  "bornagain"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  May 01, 1999

  
  I awake,
  In my birthday suit,
  Naked to ambition, to creativity, to anticipation
  At once I feel a rush of emotions, and no receptacle into which to pour them.
  I am whole, I am resurgent
  What can I say today?

  The poetry has been AWOL for much too long.
  The words want to come, but they get caught in the breeding area,
  And seldom find the modicum of inspiration needed to exercise their birth.
  My birth into realization was a long time ago.
  The words used to spill from me at some sort of superhuman rate.
  The words were in my head, in my hand, in my pen, and on the page.

  There seems to be no filter.
  Thoughts, memories, lessons, fears,
  These are filled to bursting in my psyche, yet cannot be loosed in any reasonable manner
  To find their way to the page.
  Computers were going to help.
  So now five years on from the word processor and the computer, the poetry finds it’s babysteps.

  Forty-six.
  I don’t think I felt as anxious at forty-five, maybe that was the last birthday,
  And this is the first.
  The poetry used to have a clear path from the mind to the page through the hand.
  Now in the age of information one has to power up the computer.
  What was supposed to be labor saving and a boon to creativity has become an excuse which sits in the other room.

  The words are now subservient to the fonts.
  The meaning is less important than the presentation.
  The poetry exists.
  It just doesn’t come out and play that often.

  When first confronted with the word processor document screen I didn’t know when the pages ended.
  I spent a large amount of time trying to juxtapose the pen and paper to the computer.
  Now it seems simple to me.
  Even as this document finds itself typed up on the screen,
  The poetry is not inherent.
  The function is all-inclusive, blocking clear thought.
  Maybe poetry was never meant to be typed.
  Maybe that would be a new type of poetry.
  A poetry that is
  Bornagain

  Each day is but a byte of existence
  A partition on our drive of life
  Each feeling is but a conduit to eternity
  A lifelesson learned
  An answer to childhood musings.
  Trouble is, I felt more in control during my childhood,
  The childhood which ended at forty-five.
  It took a long time.

  Who am I writing to?
  You were supposed to read me throughout the years.
  Now, in my birthday suit I feel alone and naked.
  You haven’t appeared yet,
  much like the poetry seldom appears,
  And then the poetry is only memory on a computer disk,
  And not a tangible representation of artistic endeavor.

  I want to exercise this boiling cauldron of creativity.
  This is the age of information after all.
  But I only ramble, in hopes that a theme will emerge.
  It’s been forty-six years of false starts.
  Forty-six excuses hampering the creative muscle.
  Forty-six ways of spelling procrastination.
  I read the news and I am not surprised.
  I am jaded to Millennial Madness.
  I take longer showers in the morning,
  A symbolic womb which I am reluctant to leave.
  In my brain, my processor, my universal firewire it all seems so clear,
  Bornagain.

  I want to reach out and touch you all.

  
  "What am I Looking For Today"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  May 26, 1999 5:45 P.M. pdt

  
  What am I looking for today, I say,
  What can I possibly find,
  A meaning in a moment or fulfilling fat fruition,
  A small gap of radiance in time.
  What can I possibly ask today,
  That just hasn't been asked for before,
  Does an ethereal catalog exist in time,
  Which will open enlightenment's door?
  Who will pick up my shattered existence, I wonder,
  As at millennium's doorstep I stop,
  And can I decipher the myriad choices
  Which fall at a threatening plop?
  I was fated to understand the existential wonders,
  But to question the small things in life,
  And the more I grow up, the less I seem to know,
  And the meaning gets lost in the strife.
  A poem is but a mere grouping of words,
  And the meaning makes no sense at all,
  The door was supposed to open long ago,
  And I merely stare openmouthed at the wall.
  Do you even exist, I can wonder with ease,
  Will you read me and give me a call.
  The other half empty, and I all alone,
  Life was started, then stopped at the stall.

  
  "Father's Day"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  June 20, 1999 6:15 P.M. pdt

  
  Consider the children, the earth's progeny,
  Offspring of Mother Gaia and Father Time,
  Unfilled vessels yearning for answers that don't exist,
  Open unwritten books waiting for their authors to arrive.
  Consider the open vulnerability and the outstretched hands
  The beatific visages and the clean crisp personas.
  The answers to the questions of eternity, themselves,
  Open to any notion which comes their way.
  Don't let the children worry, for the time for that will come,
  Open the door and let them go out and play.

  A fitting time for pondring'
  For I have no children of my own,
  But I see the world's children, and they seem to worry so,
  As years go by, the laughter subsides a bit
  And those questions are always the whys which we never know.
  Consider the playgrounds, with rusty junglegyms of yore
  Coexisting with the homelessshoppingcart parkinglots,
  And the wretched refuse on the floor.
  Consider a village where the children will be safe,
  And won't need to ask why a reason exists.
  Please don't let the children worry, although the time for that has come,
  Open the door and let them go out and play.

  Consider the children, ripe fruits of the Millennium,
  Ready to take the reins of our mistakes and ride,
  Hopefully they'll help to make the world a better place,
  So don't let them worry now,
  Open the door and let them go out and play.
  These are my thoughts on Father's Day.

  
  "Sunburst of Emotion"
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  July 09, 1999 6:15 P.M. pdt

  
  Roommate listening to Abbey Road really loud in the other room.
  Still wears (my) cordless headphones because he was off all day and
  he's drunkagain, and the noise, although pleasant,
  I always liked that album anyway is making me SCRREEEEEAAAAMMMM because how
  can I convey the wonderful thought with which I am filled when I am confronted
  with music blaring from the other room you tell me?????

  The promise of the webpoem experiment shall see a certain satisfaction
  as I notice other hits on the pages of the webpresence site.
  The poetic resurgence will outshine recent blight.
  The words will spill out again and again,
  And will hopefully be read, and passed around, as in days of yore.
  Or else what is a poet for?
  Sure I understand that this is not publication. The web is a democratic
  situation.
  People might steal my words and claim them as their own.
  Well at forty-six I'm not famous so I have no pick to bone.

  I might , as a childless parent, a metaphor for spoiled youth,
  Regress to a station where I might be able to help the clueless
  Clue into a pragmatic realization, that's the truth.
  As I rewrite my poems for the benefit of all comers,
  I can see all the questions I've asked, boy what bummers.
  When we can download a reality, a shared soul, a mannered existence,
  All manner and matter of truth will meet no resistance.
  The words will spill out and be gobbled up by the masses,
  If I have something to learn, let me impart wisdom in my classes.
  You see, as a failed teacher, glad to meetcher, I can gain,
  From the tortuous feelings I've garnered through the pain.
  If but one soul will connect, forget the sex, forget the age,
  Sit down once again, read my book, turn the page.

  I at once feel a connection, a resurrection,
  A love potion,
  A smile, tender musings,
  a large

  Sunburst of Emotion

  the muses are waiting. I will retrieve their e-mails.

   

  "antichrist.com "
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  August 06, 1999 4:45 P.M. pdt

  
  The devil is in the details, folks, that's what he told me last night, anyway.
  I turned on the tv, settled back to relax, and he just wouldn't go away.
  He covers my ears with erudition, and he covers my mouth with a stain.
  I learned not to listen to him long ago, yet he's always there when I feel any pain.
  He stays for a drink, and he chats by the hour, and by midnight you won't see his hooves.
  He has stories to tell, and he does this real well, he goes automode, easy he grooves.
  He was relating a tale, all hearty and hale, and we ran out of booze dope and food.
  He said never mind this time, the first time you don't need to pay, and I thought for a minute, that's good.
  He was there in the chat rooms, on the internet, too, waxing purely poetic , serene
  He was really sorta hip, and could surmise at a clip that I found both alarming and keen.
  The devil is always around boys and girls, and I gave him no cause to depart.
  By the time Jesus arrived, the party had died, but the devil was doing his part
  To rejoice you and me, and almost succeeded you see, but we're smarter than that don't ya know.
  Jesus went to the kitchen and got the last beer, but the devil was moving real slow.
  We put on some Charlie Daniels, it was a vinyl lp, because you see
  I never got around to purchasing the devil's songs on cd.
  Jesus thought it was cool, but he just couldn't stay, and the devil passed out on the couch.
  My head started to hurt, so I needed to be curt, and I gave the devil his due.
  "Just get out of the house, don't let the door hit your ass", I laughed but he paid it no heed.
  He gave me his e-mail address and a wink, said visit my website and bleed.
  The devil is here in the details, you see..
  And we all have a damned good ol' time.
  But Jesus has too many webisites for the devil to log on to, and he's far too busy to see the crime.
  The antichrist knocks at the door every hour.
  The tv preaches killings and hate.
  I get locked up in the puter and thank my good graces,
  That the devil, tonight, will be late.

  Jesus has 10,432 hits on his page.
  The devil has 666,666,666.
  I locked the door tonight, though it gave the devil a fright, and let Jesus get in his few licks.
  We are all part of the universal mind,
  The devil and Jesus and me.
  The force, and the farce, and the good, and the bad.
  Till tomorrow, and eternity.

  (some excuse for poetry, eh?)

  ---

  BEHIND THE POETRY: I've posted my 10 BEST POEMS of the 70s and the 80s, and this is my entry for my own personal "10 Best Poems" written during the decade of the 90s. I only wrote 69 poems during that decade. I lived with my ex girlfriend Pat during 92-95, and most of the poems from that period, including the 2nd through 5th poems presented here, I call "The Pat Poems" and are addressed to or about my ex girlfriend, written during the relationship . It was in 1999 that I created my website www.allthingsmike.com, and the last five poems presented here are from 1999, which was a good year for poetry, after having written only two poems in all of the previous three years. "bornagain", as I have mentioned many times on this blog, was the first written piece on my new website and is a clarion call for my creativity as I was "bornagain" into the digital medium of the internet. MFN/ppf

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