A Litany

A soft touch in the drought like brushing fire,
Pressed upon the skin, upon desire,
Providing an all encompassing flame
From her and her slender and fragile frame.
How my mind does want of her to be pinned.
I must be blown in the hurricane wind.
Oh my Lord! Does thou know how I have sinned?

Eager am I to partake in the feast,
Saving no cuisine, savoring at least
As much is offered, yet asking for more,
Starving sense with excess, the stomach's roar,
And my strong appetite does not rescind.
My gullet grows now to never be thinned.
Oh my Lord! Does thou know how I have sinned?

My rapacious pursuit for some power
Consumes my consciousness in this hour.
I pine for, I long for more than I need:
A house of gold and the money tree's seed.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Four Billion Years

Four Billion Years
Four billion years of evolution,
Maybe more,
And we've come to this:
Abstractly desiring an intangible wad of green paper
That holds no intrinsic value—
Other than perhaps as a modicum of power and influence.

Four billion years—
And what have we accomplished?

We've burned down the rain forest
To make room for cattle farms
That are operated by colored people
That aren't paid enough to eat—
Yes, that's right, the white man still owns slaves—
So that we can grow morbidly obese,
Grease dripping from our mouths
Down the folds of fat that line our chins
To caress the curvature of our stomachs—

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Eulogy

They buried me
In a box of oak wood,
In a soft plot of land.
Now, the green grass grows
On the surface
Over the space
Where my body lies.
I guess my muscles and skin
Deteriorate in the fertile soil,
Rotting away in the rain
As it erodes the landscape above,
As other peoples' footprints
Sink on top of the spot
Where I am buried.
The weather continues
While I do not,
But someone once told me
That I will live forever
As long as I cared for others,
Or as long as they cared for

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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The Mirror

I
Remind my eyes of the things they embrace,
Reflect the reality I believe.
The mirror image of myself I now face,
For what reason would my portrait deceive
My perceptions—forms bound by features,
Shaped and cut by the sharp, crystalline glass?
I see a roughness, an uncarved texture
Polishing after time has come to pass.
There is no confusion on the surface,
The thin, sea-blade slicing across the shore.
By the blunted edge, there is no purpose
To sunder things much deeper than before.
I look and find I appear so clearly,
Thus the clarity is all I can see.

II
Thus the clarity is all I can see,
But what lies underneath the illusion?
Do I simply peer upon an effigy

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Under Control

Please, do not panic. Do not be alarmed.
Relax and make yourself comfortable.
If you remain calm, you will not be harmed.
You will find yourself sustained and stable.
We can provide you perpetual bliss
And dismiss despair if you accept this.
Please, do not find a reason to worry.
There is no need to enter a fury
Of frantic malcontent. Just be peaceful.
Assist your happiness in a hurry.
Everything is under our control.

Your expenses are accommodated.
This is a free trip forward and ahead.
Smile. You are correct to be elated.
Forge to the frontiers yet to be tread.
See a world of options—unmade choices—
That can lead to our unified voices
Saying the same thing—all in unison.
Let us function as your kind liaison.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Towers of Ivory

Subdued by the paregoric dream-land,
Your sleepy eyes stare into the nowhere
Flashing on the screen by buttoned demand
And cosmic transmission's continued care.
They'll feed you full of the barbiturates—
Hypnotic images made inculcate—
Just to keep you still and inscouciant…
Perhaps collectiv'ly agglutinant.
God bless them and their commercial glory—
Clearing the streets of all the miscreants—
So they could build towers of ivory.

Someday, you'll be packaged and maybe canned
In the aluminum chamber's stale air,
Controlled by the factory's firm command—
Which compresses you to the market square.
There, in process, you may capitulate,
Your core contained as pulp concentrate.
Saw the top off, keep yourself compliant
When you lose you lid, scalping salient.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Post-Post-Modern Poetry

Post-post-modern poetry is about making observations
That aren't interrelated and pretending that they
Have some emotional significance or
Are ironic (or not—irony is slowly falling out of fashion) .
We strip our verses of the ornate,
Of the indulgence, the pretension,
The figurative language,
Reading a string of thoughts as they appear to us
In that given moment,
A moment which is taken from us
As we receive it.
Grandma eats chocolate and sews my mother a doll
That my sister will play with.
My dog is fourteen years old—
I guess he'll die soon.
My dad works at Big Lots.
He loves his job, but my mom says he works too much.
I was going to take another semester of community college,
But my financial aid didn't clear because I've had my
Associate's degree for a year or so now—

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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The Actress

The actress stands upon the stage
And the bustling world that surrounds her
Silences.
Only on the stage is there
Solitude.
Only on the stage,
When pressed under the repellent gravity
Of open eyelids, is there
The peace of mind
To react instinctively
To the mechanics of social magnetism.
The spotlight burns down, bright upon her,
Softening her make-up—
Letting it melts slowly down her skin
As if it were a glass
Through which we could see her.

She prefers the classics
And the avant-garde
When she needs to perform.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Fata Organa

Shopping—
small store (cashier standing)
I approach (hoping purchases
[make {awkward}
conversation {sweating
palms, conservative social
situation: standard;
no response} enjambment-
laden,
soaked in neritic {subconsciously}
turf where
pelagic shorelines
{surf} crest in my muddled
mind, and why?
{analog dialog scrambled
in the digital
culture's cellophane:
mellowing stasis,
static, pigeonholed
in the first impression,

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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