Polluted Thoughts
There's a miasma of polluted thoughts
Seeping in through my skull into my head,
Spreading like thick, inky oil blots
Over the ocean of ideas' vast spread.
This desultory, disheveled thinking—
So chimerical, yet so anodyne—
Lobotomizes me by dissecting
The unexpressed, latent desires of mine.
My somnolent narratives grow dirty,
Filthier as they progress and unfold
And I'm afraid the tainting could hurt me
If the biohazard isn't controlled.
Paroxysms of the oneiric state
Suggest poisons for which I supplicate.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Clip Your Wings, Baby
In the darkest depths far below,
The furnace may incinerate
Sin's vice and folly apropos
Before evil may saturate.
With no way to absquatulate
From what Death's disposition brings,
One must rely on their damned fate
And clip their feathery, white wings.
The mocking voice, Contrapasso,
Cuts sharply, harshly—biserrate—
Into the transgressions I know:
What bad intention does create.
My insult will annihilate
In sameness what the black heart sings.
The self must incapacitate
And clip its feathery, white wings.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Unincorporated Insights X
By the Holy right of their assertions,
We permit more for a selective few—
The few that would live by their dispersion;
The few that dispel, for others, virtue;
The few that show an eidetic éclat
In our too-nictitated memories;
The few preaching their secular Salat,
So that we may bow to their glories.
By the Holy right of economics,
We accept their pure Word as Biblical,
Building pietistic ergonomics
That subsidize on the unnatural.
They pardon their afflatus as it spews,
Disseminating what is maybe true.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Synchronicity
My razorblade mobius strip circles
Around and around, rotating forward
Until it becomes the backwards babel
That cuts meaning into pieces—obscured.
The corresponding coincidences
Cause me to question probability.
How many improbable instances
Have come to define what is real to me?
What is truth when it chops itself to bits—
Slip, splitting open, pieces pried apart?
Does objective fact defy sense and wit
To rely more succinctly on the heart?
It's serendipitous forces, I'm sure
That decide our instinctual nature.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Our Industrial Society
Our industrial society makes
Insatiable demands upon us all.
It is organized in a way that takes
Our souls and puts them in a shopping mall.
Our actions are reduced to what they cost;
Thoughts, diminished to impulse purchases.
Yet, it is implied that nothing is lost—
We are being provided services.
Is our life made better as a result
Of such factory-constructed progress,
Or is our infrastructure an insult
That controls us through the want of excess?
I fear humanity may be destroyed.
I also fear I may be paranoid.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Thoughts of a Catholic Stillborn
I'm denied my beatific vision.
I can't see the light laid out before me.
All I've known is infant indecision:
Imprisoned at birth and never set free.
What is the crime to my long punishment?
I'm indisposed of my eternal fate.
I can't learn of material torment;
I can't have hope- I was baptized too late.
I wasn't purified in mercy's well.
My sins weren't sacrimentally erased.
I'm left of heaven, on the edge of hell,
Unaware of supernatural grace.
I'm stuck in limbo until the water
Douses passion for something holier.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Food for Thought
Enjoy your vacuum-sealed, microwave meal
Today for a low cost alternative
To cooking. Such a budget-friendly deal!
Tailor-made for the healthy and active,
We featured foods low in saturated
Fats and sodium, high in vitamins,
Fiber-fortified—already plated!
Wholesome, delicious—filled with nutrition—
And made with artificial flavors
That taste natural, almost authentic.
Contains zero calorie sweeteners
To assist making your slender stomach.
Our pretty package suggests you buy it.
Enjoy your chemical dinner diet.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Unincorporated Insights V
For what reason do we speak un-freely,
Relegating ourselves to elision?
Our motives are spoken clandestinely,
Enshrouded by baseless omission.
As zombie hoards packed in a ballet box,
Groaning for a persona non grata,
Our disheveled culture carelessly stocks
Its thoughts of banal desiderata.
We replace facts with comforts and patterns.
We substitute our fate for the future—
Devoured like the many sons of Saturn,
Relinquishing our delineature.
We dismantle our bloodlines and unions,
Cauterized by divergent opinions.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Western Medicine
Monday through Friday, we need our caffeine
To give us enough energy to be
Productive members of society.
We love our acid pot of coffee beans.
Friday through Sunday, we need a vaccine:
Something to kill the lingering debris
Of motivation. We need lethargy,
So we soak in alcohol, get serene,
While failing to realize we poison
Ourselves to enjoy our lives. We forget
What it feels like to see things clear-headed.
We're surrounded by Western Medicine—
And narcotics and television sets—
Making sure diseases are embedded.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Our Modern Acquisitions
Our modern acquisitions are simple
A transitory mode of non-having.
We hoard symbols of wealth so mindlessly
That we hardly realize the lacking
We have of our physical properties.
In fact, we have only an illusion,
A latent desire to forcefully seize
Objects that anesthetize confusion.
We instructed in the forgetful
Doctrines and taught to covet and to crave,
Reinforcing not what could be useful,
But cold and aggressive ways to behave.
See past what you've experienced thus far,
And be not what you have, but who you are.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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