Burning Books

Throw your books in the fire. What do they say
As the pages crisp in soft, warm embers?
When the paper blackens the words away,
What thoughts will the ashen scraps remember?
Erase the nostalgia of history
And abandon semiotic recourse
In the shrouding exhaust of mystery.
Let them vanish in the singeing heat's source.
Destroy the facts that exceed their meaning.
Allow truth to shribble inside the pit
Underneath illiteracy's screening.
Let the ledger's binding begin to split.
Stoke the blazes of intolerance
That make all information ignorance.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Vacation

Are you feeling overstimulated,
Suffering from borderline exhaustion?
Have, all this time, you waited and waited
For the joys of a peaceful vacation?
The TV tells you about a warm beach
Where you could bask all your days in the sun.
The billboards over the street make you reach
Out, grasping for a disguised source of fun.
Wouldn't it be nice to go far away
To someplace foreign—someplace exotic?
Wouldn't it be nice to leave now, today?
The fantasy has become erotic.
You desire an escapist's orgasm:
Traveling pleasure's faintest phantasm.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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To Excavate

What chances do we have to excavate
Toward the deepest pits of creation?
Do impenetrable riches await,
Affording the cost of aspiration?
Is that ground that lies below a bedrock,
A foundation to support where we stand?
Do we build upon it with flinty blocks
That seem colossal against distant sands?
Or, perhaps, could that ground be a desert,
Athirst for streams that have yet to nourish
It? Is its fertility left inert
While its design suggests that it flourish?
We will only know if we can dig through
The sediments stacking on what is true.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Unincorporated Insights IX

Fallacies that we believe in argue,
Challenging each other—conflicting lies.
Veracity wallows out of our view—
In either a subterfuge or disguise.
We become confused, trying to translate
The coded hieroglyphics that carom
Over lofty expectations— to spate
Our process like a gyrating maelstrom.
Glabrous, fulgurated electrical
Strikes beam through the core of the whirling storm,
And the skies rain an antithetical
Slathering as the dry climates deform.
The weather is forced— through harsh coercion—
By the Holy right of their assertions.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Genesis 1: 28

The molded forms of caricatured clay
Compile in their poses behind the glass.
A blast furnace for the menagerie
Chars the chipped remains as the ashes pass.
A choking bark calls, screaming in the cage,
A cry for freedom, for civility,
But flames like whips crack with unbridled rage,
Printing burning grooves in humility.
Nature is manipulated in strain,
Trained by the strokes of simulated tricks.
The will's momentum begins to wane
And the divisive smoke grows dark and thick.
Nature is tempered, a beast to command
By beasts unable to understand.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Secondhand Conversation

Like a mephitic, obsidian smoke,
Language billows in impervious stacks.
In that clouded awning do our thoughts soak,
Enceinte and tainted with deep shades of black.
Crowded are we, insidiously sheathed,
In the choke-hold of constant stagnation.
Incessantly deprived of air we've breathed,
We cough up secondhand conversation.
We know not the subterfuge that bellows
Beneath the murmurs we enunciate.
We inhale the pareidolic shadows
That emit only to depreciate.
So, what resides there—in our spoiling lungs?
No fresh air— a song forever unsung.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Jetlag

Jet fuel falls upon the clouds overhead,
Making oily smears across the night sky.
The sun ripples in a faint rooibos red,
And it sinks in the exhaust wafting by.
I hear an aloft, sibilant brisance.
I hear engines burst, rumbling where I stand,
And rattling me from my cognizance—
And into a less tellurian land.
I look down at the pavement beneath me,
Turning away from the kerosene trails
That contaminate these heavens I see—
Where stars seem to capitulate and fail.
I don't want to see what's lagging behind
In the process of becoming refined.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Mild Discontent

The pacified traffic passes me by—
As if the streets had been lubricated.
The skyline tarpaulin above drips-dry—
Heavy from the noirish pools it had sated.
Disinfected garbage lines the crosswalk—
A hygienic filth litters the pavement.
The air fills with a murmur of smalltalk—
The grievances of subtle enslavement.
I'm between a sewer and a heaven—
Beside the towers of facsimile.
And I'm where the wires have interwoven—
My limbs are pleached involuntarily.
Yet, the further trussed my life becomes—
The more I resist the urge to succumb.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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On a Brisk Summer Evening

On a brisk summer evening,
I was sitting on my couch,
Watching the television
With my windows open.
Distracted for a bit,
I turned my head to look
Upon the clouds,
Noticing a flock of jets
Stream through the sky,
Leaving clouded fumes
In their passing,
Looking like comets
Trailing down the horizon
Toward the sunset.
I turned my head back toward the TV,
And I saw the planes again,
Flying over where I had just been looking,
Repeating what I had just seen
With someone else's commentary
And context—

[...] Read more

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Gasoline

You need fuel to get where you're going,
A source of combustion in the engine
That circulates how energy's flowing—
Fluidly in a fast forward motion.
You need fuel to achieve the high speeds,
The rushing feeling of never stopping—
Progress eternal—consumption exceeds
While the necessity of it's dropping.
We have better, quicker, new addictions
Advertised as things you must have to live.
The motivation of constant action
Plugs you in at the pump—stay submissive,
Hooked on personal, commercial vaccines:
Fill up on your fuel, your gasoline.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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