Islands
My ideas are like islands adrift
In the sea that resides inside my skull.
The water sweeping beside them is swift
Though the exterior landscape is dull.
Between them lies the long-sunken wreckage
Of disembodied documents I've read.
On their shores, harbors await the dockage
Where understanding is traded and spread.
Occasionally, storms of frustration
May ravage that sea, generating
The loss of previous affirmations—
But what frustrates becomes liberating.
I voyage to where the current is calm,
And let it flow out from beneath my palm.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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If...
If ev'ryone believed in adulthood,
We would not behave like impish children.
If ev'ryone believed in something good,
Perhaps our evils would never happen.
If ev'ryone believed in honesty,
Thoughts would not require representation.
If ev'ryone believed in identity,
Each person would not crave affirmation.
If ev'ryone believed in truthfulness,
We would not follow laws of hypocrites.
If ev'ryone believed in wanting less,
Maybe we could learn to want what we get.
If ev'ryone believed in how they feel,
What is imagination would be real.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Alchemy
Let us crochet our genetic fabrics,
Link our chains of bonded polypeptides,
And stir them in heat, so that they may mix
Like alloys and colloids: emulsified.
Let us make personal panaceas,
Create emollient gestures and phrase
With the nearly infinite ideas
That we see through our third eye's focused gaze.
Let us transfigure our leads into gold,
All our waters into the ripe, red wine
That will loosen variables controlled
For experiments of our desire's design.
Let us explore how chemically bound
We are with that which alchemy has found.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Session 2
Even though an electric current
Is flowing through my hands, almost pulsing
In my fingertips, I don't feel torrents
Of energy beaming or embossing
In my nerve endings. Instead, I feel numb,
Disconnected from the signals in my
Synapses, unaware of what's become
Of each sensation and how to reply.
The tissues binding around my bones are
Tense and petrified. They're too tight to touch—
To grasp for perceptions that seem so far
From my body, vanishing past my clutch.
If only an impulse could control me,
I could release all my stored energy.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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As
As the blacktop blisters and crusts,
As the skyscrapers abrade the ground,
As the automobiles mold in the morning dew,
As the airplanes fold like peeled tin foil in a garbage can,
As the waters blacken and evaporate to osmose from the filth,
As the air chokes on itself to breathe,
As the plants gasp for the sun that should peak through polluted clouds,
As the animals become wide-eyed and mouthed and chested,
As the people unpopulate the crowded elevators that bring them down
Into the apartment complex of oblivion,
Will we know why?
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Yesterday
Yesterday lies like a liquid stream,
Translucent and unconsolidated,
Disappearing as if it were a dreams,
And each lapping wave is modulated
To the fabrication-cast frequencies
That transmit the pulse of our synthetic,
Story-based storage of old memories;
Thus, personal truths are made prosthetic,
An aluminum foil to bend and twist,
To contort in the form of things we'll say.
It wraps all the feelings we may have missed,
But exists only as a sobriquet.
A name-sake, a marker to measure time's place,
A satellite orbiting inner space.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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A Blunder
IF God created us in his image,
Then why do we reject the holiness
He instilled in us? Why would we damage
Others in the pursuit of cleanliness?
IF we created God to serve our needs,
Then why don't we heed the virtues we've made?
Why must our personal greed supersede
The divinities that we masquerade?
What is the worth of Christ-like compassion
Or Bodhisattva-like enlightenment
IF they've never truly been in fashion—
IF we've always favored disheartenment?
Why does our species refuse to release
And give in to the harbingers of peace?
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Shakespeare's Beard
Thou hast wedged scissors in mine cranium,
Flaying thoughts by thy cutting wit's swift slice.
Mine mind had been filled hot helium,
A gas hovering above sound advice.
Perhaps I deserve leaking emissions
To deflate mine ego's poor decisions.
Perhaps as a floating, feral balloon,
I had embroached upon flight far too soon.
Regardless of mine fool-hardy actions
And flighty dreams of ignoble fancy,
Am I not worthy of benignancy?
Why must mine light air split in diffraction,
Scattering by thy sharp criticism?
Can I not have gentle mysticism?
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Hypothesis
That which we know today must be questioned
Before we can worship it tomorrow.
If we accept a ‘truth' unconditioned,
Then folly and ignorance will follow.
We must defeat our bias of belief
And overcome our reflex to retreat.
We must suffer omitting self-relief,
So we may challenge thoughts that seem complete.
There is no certainty. There is no fact
That can be verified in total trust.
Only the unknown is purely exact—
And that's because it's not often discussed.
Through our perpetual irreverence,
We learn the means of finding coherence.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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Ataxia
The floor underneath me is off-kilter,
Undistributed, always teetering
Like a fulcrum balanced by a filter
With its siphon feed backwards, reversing.
The shaking, sturdy ground on which I stand
Wobbles as my uncoordinated
Legs sift firm into the swift, slinking sand,
Holding my balance subordinated.
The ataxia gripping my control
Drops me in the loose palm of the limp world.
I, a spineless ragdoll, fall down and roll,
Drooping around where my body is hurled.
Meanwhile, the landscape collapses upward
And I flip back from physics so cluttered.
poem by Tim Stensloff
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