The Rip Post                                                                                              


Form Games
Form games
Main frames,
Old refrains
Childish tunes
Junes and swoons
Loves and spoons.

You look to Sinai
For commandments
But all you’ll ever find
Is abandonment,
The past has passed
And shall not be found,
Forget it all, the shape
And the sound.

Look past the forms,
If you can, look past
The configurations,
and exhilarations.

The conductor of
The symphony is
not to be seen, the
tune is familiar, it
bears repeating, but
there is not victory,
nor defeat in your
struggle for meaning
during this transit
of Venus and transept
of Mars. Lost in the
Clouds and stranded
In the stars, your
Motive purpose
Has been pickled
And canned in jars,
Put on exhibition,
In an unflattering
Rendition of “Bonhomie
et Bonne Amie.”

The plaudits you craved,
Are lost amid the audits
As you slave there in
Your cave, stooging
For losers in the home
Of the brave, cantankerous
Is the virtue that saves you from
Redundancy, but drugs you
With complacency, which
Is the worst narcotic in
The regime, the worst
Corruption in this scene.

You talk of revolt, may you
I quote on the Enlightenment,
And the enhancement of
Your academic prowess,
With your addiction to now-ness,
And all manner of egotistical wow-ness.

Form games, shapes and
Shadows, laments and refrains,
Flush the flesh down the drain,
Appeal for justice and welcome the rain.

---Jack Oakes
10/13/05

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