Anyway ... another poem. I got 14 done last month and I'm up to 17 for this month ... if I get 17 done per month I'll be on target for 200 for the year, so I'm hoping to push up to 20 for February, which will catch me up from January, and then try to keep a 17/month pace. I anticipate some of the "feel" of the poems will be chaning in March, since I'll be schlepping around a new laptop for school, which will mean that I'll be much more likely to write on that than in my little notebooks, and i have noted over the years that my writing is different when done with one hand in pen on paper versus with both hands into the keyboard. I've actually felt that the "directly into the keyboard" method is better as it gets both halves of the brain involved, but given the problems I've had with getting "space" to write, the notebook has worked well to just be there when I have some down time. Oh well, nobody cares about those details, do they? More stuff is, of course, in the archive at http://i.am/btripp ...
HELLS OF DARKER TENSION
stress enfolds
with bands of steel,
tentacles crushing,
webs of razor wire;
we are ensnared,
caught by a world
of pressure, tension,
madness and decay
there is no place
for solitary seers
in this dark zone;
none want to know,
none want to be
apart from the herd,
the malicious mass,
hateful and vile
the eternal call
"submit or be slain"
echoes from every fiber,
every angle, ever plane
of the mundane abyss
always ready to destroy
all that stands defiant
unwilling to play its game
as broken as we are
we still can't submit
to that empty sleep,
that machine dream,
the hollow being
lost within the frame
of empty existence,
their blind unthinking state
so days are fearful,
never knowing where
the next terror enters,
never being sure
what step or word
will trigger attacks,
never being free
of that nightmare
- Brendan Tripp
02/24/2002
Copyright © 2002 by Brendan Tripp