Chaos Syncopation
By
Steve Blacksmith
©Steve Blacksmith
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for picking up this book. I sincerely hope that you like it. This piece was written as part of a larger project where I attempted to write 1,000,000 words in one year. The aim of the project is still a bit unclear, but I’m certain that it will eventually have something to say about the ephemeral nature of our modern literature. So much is being created that it may very well be that “classic” works of literature are no longer being cemented into the public consciousness, even though they are absolutely still being written.
With the increasingly widespread implementation of AI in order to generate new works of art with little effort on the part of the self-described “AI Artists”, it may soon be clear whether or not us authors are a dying breed. What I have given you is my blood, sweat, tears, and soul on a whole hell of a lot of pages. Everything you will read in this project has come straight from my mind with absolutely no AI assistance.
In order for this project to work, I need your help to let me know if you found and read this book. Please visit www.steveblacksmith.com and leave a little note. Once you are done with this book, please take it back to a Little Free Library or wherever else you picked it up, so that someone else may read it.
Thank you and enjoy!
Poem Page Guide
6. Cacophony
7. Personhood
8. Controlled Chaos
9. I Need a Tattoo
10. Date with an Angel
11. Birds Aren’t Real
12. Jesus’ Publicist
13. No Smoking on Planes
14. Greek Slap Fight
15. Emperor Records
16. Future Kids
17. Ironic, Maybe?
18. Maps
19. Watch Me Slow
20. Clean Break
21. Waltz
22. Your Radiant Life
23. You Must be This Small…
24. They Did It
25. That Doesn’t Look too Hard
26. Scrollin’
27. Stress Dream
28. Edits
29. Hiking Joke
30. Word Salad
31. Naked Truths
32. British Staples
33. Tetris Effect
34. Foot Race
35. Spines
36. Manner of Disposal
37. Terms and Conditions
38. Filmmaker
39. Unextraordinary
40. Ode to Observation
41. Killer Art
42. What’s it to Ya, Jerk?
43. Faces Places
44. Youth Associations
45. One of One-Thousand this Year
46. Human Kind
47. Roads
48. Modern Morals
49. Virality
50. Nombres
51. Old Dogs
52. Prize Inside
53. Confused Saturday
54. Fear of Flying
55. Not “Funny HaHa”
56. Horse Therapy
57. Circular Logic
58. Never a Dull Burque
59. Sayings
60. Ghost Vacation
61. Get Your Sun
62. My Hearing Sucks and I’m Making it Your Person
63. World Shift
64. Ode to Insomnia
65. Cosmic Void
66. Manimal
67. Useful Idiot
68. I’m a Student Again
69. Good Language
70. Zoomies
71. Soft Hatred
72. Getting Used to It
73. Thanks, I Guess
74. Highlight
75. Artist Statement
76. A Stranger is Just a Friend You Haven’t Met Yet
77. Missing You
78. Bucket List
79. Scrape Me off the Sidewalk
80. Beating a Dead Horse
81. Buy a Bigger Box Then!
82. Ten Little Piggies
83. Thinkin’ About It
84. Family Dinner
85. Faded
86. Radicalize Me
87. Government Shutdown
88. Fashion Me a Coat
89. Water Rights
90. Headline News
91. Infrastructure
92. Vegas Heat
93. Dance Hall
94. Black Hole Son
95. Rich Men Cogs
96. Betcha
97. Dream Bigger
98. Things
99. Tag, I’m It!
100. Pedantic Hyperbole
101. You Wanna Take a Hit of This?
102. Who Cares After Life?
103. Kill Your Darling
104. Tomorrow’s Style
105. What is This Poem?
106. Bells will be Ringing
107. Worry in dB
108. Reaction Time
109. Buckle Up
110. Selfie Esteem
111. Could Have Just Asked
112. Enjoy Your Aisle Seat
113. Petty Perceptions
114. Life Hurt
115. Dog-Eared
116. Physics of Love
117. Poetry
118. A Writer’s Rewards
119. They Didn’t Laugh
120. Art Closet
121. Flow with Me
122. Social Media Standards
123. 100,000 Miles
124. Dichotomy of Beings
125. Author’s Worry
126. Excuses Excuses
Cacophony
Blasts of alarm all around me
Subjected to the intersecting lines
Invisible spectrum of the bombard
Take me down a notch, to 11
Scale me metric pentatonic
A measure of note, so offbeat
Toward some chaos syncopation
Render my drum afib clean
Personhood
I think that in being me
Is like looking through reflections
Spending life observing others
Far away from introspections
Shakespeare spoke a bit on acting
“Holding mirrors up to nature”
But can someone learn to fake life
Just by learning nomenclature?
Every souls a bit complex
Improvising on the spot
As they act out their gut feelings
Trusting them with casted lot
Hear me haunt a memory palace
Somewhere just beyond the couch
And I’ll be a better person
On my honor, I do vouch
Controlled Chaos
I kick rocks off of the sidewalk
Find them flicked up by low knees
Is this a sign of control
Like there’s a universe to please?
I think it’s my own compulsions
Answering a chaos order
Like it means anything to
Place them back across the border
Forcing rocks in with more rocks
Doesn’t make a lick of sense
Like their composition matters
Their granules equal dense
Just because the eons happened
Doesn’t make our will correct
What makes us think we dictate
Or can universe direct
I Need a Tattoo
I’ve got shit to do
And papers to grade
Kitchen could stand a clean
Yeah, I need a tattoo
Got some bills I could pay
And trash in the heap
Some short stories to write
Yeah, I need a tattoo
There’s a teetering cup
Hanging half-off the sink
Pressing like other things
But, I need a tattoo
I could rewrite my life
Sell a book, get a job
I got lots I could do
But, I need a tattoo
Date with an Angel
Are you coming to the dance?
Can you get the time off
From your stint in heaven?
Fly down just to hop
Billow wings just to step
Does it not seem below your station?
To feel mortal hands shake
As they caress your waist?
I bet the archangels don’t tremble
Handling you like a flaming sword
And I spilled punch on your dress
As my eyes burnt out by holy fire
Birds Aren’t Real
Birds aren’t real
If they were then we’d be jealous
If they were, we’d find a way
If they were, we’d not be satisfied
With planes that can delay
If they were, we’d stare in wonder
As they drank from planted cup
Then we’d snatch them from the air
And demand they take us up
We could hollow out our bones
Have we ever even tried?
Show me one intrepid person
Then say whether if they died
Yes, the Wright Brothers did soar
In a time when we tried things
But I don’t recall in reading
“Surgically implanted wings”
Birds aren’t real or we’re cowards
If we weren’t we’d be up there
Soaring high amongst the pigeons
Forcing them to share the air
Jesus’ Publicists
Jesus died when he was thirty-three
If you believe that sorta tale
He accomplished more in a year
Than your average, thirty-something male
I have him beat by years and change
Somewhere, thirty-three add five
But that just means it takes the cake
That I’m unaccomplished and alive
The dude was known from Galilee
All through the land to Bethlehem
But I got ten likes on my pics
By the same coterie on the Gram
How I’d love some notoriety
Even bad press is good, heaven knows
Admittedly, he had a leg-up on me
He had Saint Paul curate his posts
No Smoking on Planes
I brought a battery on a plane
It slipped my pocket, out of reach
Bet you’re mad you checked your lithium
Cause mine just now started smoking
Greek Slap Fight
We laugh at slap fighting
Then cower at tectonic subduction
Is that not just Gaia’s motion
Clashing with He-face-stus?
Emperor Records
The incompetent ruler only lives
A hundred or so years
Thank god we only have to tolerate
From infancy to grandchild’s death
I’ll be up in heaven looking down
At all the nothing that changed
And all the uncounted votes
That we never got the chance to cast
Future Kids
I will never have a child
Surgery made sure of that
I chose not to procreate
To become unproductive
Yet, I don’t believe it’s laziness
That guides us to these truths
But in the question’s dire hope
In whether we believe
A child may inherit life
Or possibly our fire
To flourish in a garden
Or struggle for every breath
And in that garden, would they plant?
In pollution, would they curse?
Will they cultivate good soil?
Or fie their dads’ abandoned Earth?
Ironic, Maybe?
Would you rather
Be a bird on a window?
Or a bird on a windmill?
Flying to meet your end
With the help of the wind
Maps
To step beyond your booby traps
Would certainly show unmatched skill
To navigate you without maps
Well darling, therein lies the thrill!
Watch Me Slow
I synced my watch to yours
We found joy in pushing each other’s buttons
Heard the beep of tandem beating
Knowing that our time was current
Somewhere down this weaving tempo
Struck a hair into the gears
Now my watch is running slower
While yours dances with the universe
Clean Break
I’m in need of a clean break
Somewhere along the fibula should do
Or, perhaps, just one or two digits
The unimportant metatarsals
The ones that hurt more in the heal than the snap
That bind together stuck in fine splints
Just do me up like Annie Wilkes would
As it would be easier than breaking your heart
Waltz
I would like to see you
With your hand in mine
Your clothes on the floor
Your fingers on my cheek
Your thoughts enter mine
Your plan of attack
Your excellency
Your tinge of a smile
I would like to see you
With your hand in mine
As my head comes undone
As it’s placed on a pike
As my thoughts trickle out
As my eyes lose their light
As your thumb turns around
As my soul becomes numb
I would like to see you
With your hand in mine
How I haunt all your halls
How you taxidermy me
How you place me in the closet
How I come out when you’re lonely
How you pose me like a friend
How you beckon me to dance
I would like to see you
With your hand in mine
Your Radiant Life
Put your light through this prism
And see your constituent parts
All quite equal in measure
Even if you can’t see
Do not trust on the angle
Or the limits of eyes
To tell you what is shining
In your radiant life
You Must be This Small…
I need to lose some weight
Not to impress or save myself
But to see now where I fit
Within this microcosm
They Did It
Disneyland put a hot dog inside of a pickle
Fried it up crispy and set it loose on the world
And all of God’s angels in heaven did weep
Bringing forth the floods to purify Earth
That Doesn’t Look Too Hard
I could orchestrate a band
Some might say that it’d be tough
Bradley Cooper trained his hand
For six years to be enough
That was confidence in acting
Gunning for the high awards
Though his methods were exacting
Different things we go towards
I’m not saying I’m a maestro
Though I’d take it seriously
Given time it would be nice though
Wave that stick confidently
Maybe six or seven days
I could convince some of skill
With my trained, bullshitting ways
I’d nail every beat and trill
Scrollin’
I’ll be dead in the morning
As long as I’m scrollin’ on doom
To see what portends of the future
Layin’ alone in my room
A war over there, far away
And a plague in my neighbors backyard
It’s not up to me to save all’a’ya
We’re shattered and act like a shard
I said I’ll be dead in the morning
As sure as the sun crests the hill
My heart cannot handle the story
As times grows; more bitter the pill
Stress Dream
Do you tremble inside of a dream?
Can you feel the walls caving in
Battering the inside of your eyelids?
Pushing the barrier; poking the escape
Feel the floor squirming under foot, son
Sense the walls changing in front of you
Walk through an arch that exists for a second
Then turns into steel when placed at your back
There is no hatch to crawl through
Your plane’s door won’t open under pressure
Still, you try and feel your eyes struggle in pain
Wriggling to free themselves from sleep’s cell
Edits
I think we all self-edit
But, my friend,
You take the cake
Like a cheap pencil topper
Walking around
With a stick up your ass
Hiking Joke
The sign said the hike had ended at 12,000 feet
Though I didn’t have an altimeter
I was inclined to believe it
Word Salad
Tomato, lettuce, onion, ranch
Bell pepper, croutons, cucumber
Put those nouns together
You’d have one long word
Naked Truths
I threw money at my problems
But it still wasn’t enough
My last recourse to solve them?
Seeing them in the buff
Cause a naked truth is honest
But lookin’ is quite tough
As I’m staring in the mirror
Hoping each truth is a bluff
British Staples
I brought a staple to a gunfight
But your weapon jammed
Which I thought was strange
Since I was the one who was thick
Tetris Effect
Often, I write these poems late at night
The words flash like a magician’s trick paper
Only they stamp impressions in my head
To extend their stay as the ink settles in
This is no tattoo, but it will fade in time
Sleeping after can be elusive
Even with hours between pad and pen
The dance of word reveries speaks freely
Foot Race
I bet you can’t beat me in a foot race
I’ll start running while you try to hit me
Spines
I’ve killed dozens of men in my time
Plenty did not go down quiet
Of course, all of those boys were me
A necessary evil for growth
We used to go ‘round burning cacti
A quick bath to take off their spines
It could kill the weapon or lose the life
But we take risks to no longer hurt
Manner of Disposal
If they ever let me pick
My own means of execution
I’ll say “let’s not play the hits”
No drugs or electrocution
I’ll request to get some air
Running free in open field
Until when my toe does tap
And a land mine makes me yield
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