Cacophony Of The Soul: Select Writings Of Zarn Ishtare

[Zarn Ishtare]

I live in the land of the slow thunder

like my feet

it too makes impacts in the sand

leaving behind its own unique

'footprint'.


The Artillery Shells

keep a slow and steady beat

like a secret form of syncopation

only the patient can hear.

[Zarn Ishtare]

"In Service"
'God, Country, Corps'

The wind is howling now
the wolf is at the door
the clarion call rings out
Calling for the 'Corps.



We go by land, by air and sea
shaping the future's history
I for my brother, and my brother for me
To a far off sandy shore.


deadly flowers bloom
their fiery petals light up too soon
and a truck goes up in sulpher and smoke.
Words I wish I never wrote.


They come in droves, in groups and waves
over the trash-heap they pave
a new-found path, a better way
For the country, for the Corps.

We wave goodbye to a far-off place
We all came back, by the grace!
And face the confusion of home,
the lack of smoke, the noise is gone.


We hide tears behind our eyes
Tell ourselves we're fine (What a lie!)
as the salute rings out, we finally cry
remembering his name.


Not a year gone and we're back again
if I fall, please tell my friends
my last words, at the end
"God, Country, Corps."

[Peanut]

Both of these pieces were rather interesting Zarn. I especially liked "In Service" with all its end rhyming glory.

[Zarn Ishtare]

"The Brush Off"




Brush me off to break such fragile connections and tender lines;
deny me permission
to speak
I'll say everything inside of me
but only inside of me

in the corner talking to myself; in a room full of people I'm the only one left
take the cord and snap it tight; the lines between people
I can see them severing when I close my eyes
But I'm so cold to it! So callous to the cold shoulder; brittle little chips falling off my frozen face
but I don't care and it's not like I'm sorry the drums beat differently for me
find me a misfit island, I will, a society for the manics and the maniacs who try to write
like me

in spite of this self-searching, I still see people as buildings with hearts like doors

complicated locking mechanisms, looking to find the right code, listening to the tumblers click


I'm sick of it

perhaps it's best to be alone?

[Zarn Ishtare]

"Where did the music go?"





Who put out the music?

Don't tell me it's time to go home; I've got another dance in me
A few drinks too, but nevermind that
let the flow keep flowing
don't let it slow, keep going
I need that light and music like I needed that phone call that didn't come
If I reject reality with ciggerettes and beer, just alittle bit longer
I'll be alright
of course I'll be alright
House lights, I'll bust them out
just leave the lasers and the subwoofers lying where they are
whaddya mean it's five A.M? I just got here
and I'm ready for tonight
forgetting is easier with the speakers blowing out my ear-drums
Not too much to drink, I'll lose my syncopation

my balance

my head

S o l e t th e music go o n
til l th e st.a.r.s are wa.sh.e d a..wa.y by..t he sun

[Zarn Ishtare]

"Falling Through Life"


It feels like I'm just tripping through the dream sequence;
falling through my various realities
living through romance fics and webcomics
crashing through every forum and sub-section of the "cool life"
not quite intended diving, but my form's good enough
experiencing the metaphorical wind as it rushes by
dropping....falling...one begins to wonder when
the sky will end and the ground'll begin

[Zarn Ishtare]

I have suddenly rediscovered

the subtle and exquisite pleasures of
the long
sweet
slow
extended

...kiss.


Darling, a lifetime of chasing love-phantoms and pining away for false princesses didn't prepare me for you.

[Zarn Ishtare]

"A Collection of Seasons"


reaching
always reaching
but there is a season for these things
where a boy climbs the apple tree
the man will simply reach up and pluck.
So to with this and I and you.

It is a time in one's life to grasp
perilously chase down your identity
win a victory
or take your last gasp.
21 went by so fast.

But the unusual seasons of our lives
twist and turn on greenwich mean-time
a season for rest, and seven to deploy
leaves a very short season of spring
called joy.

Service does take it's toll;
Age's roots find deeper soil
laugh lines become firm, and I
am slowly losing my hair at twenty two.

But I cannot answer you
when you ask "why do you do,
the things you do?".
It's more that I cannot remember when
I suffered and did not say, "Again!"

Because the uniform wears at you
sometime even tears at you
only once did he die, and yet I see
the careworn form and fragile face
each time that I close my eyes.

But it redeems itself in time
or so says all I've ever read
and I am thankful for my life
having been one of the walking dead.

[Zarn Ishtare]

an older man alone

crowds his empty room

with a flock of perilous thoughts

"too soon", they caw, "too soon"

his incense of ciggerette smoke

taints the light from the outside moon

while the ashes float on the stray breeze

the air filled with the sound of broken guitar

a stuttering fan

so how do we find this old man?

surrounded by bottles and old beer cans?

Yes.

but for a moment he simply smiles and nods

and mutters a prayer to his household gods.

[Zarn Ishtare]

bumping for reviews.

[Zarn Ishtare]

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted.

[Zarn Ishtare]

bump.

[Peanut]

Once there was a member named Zarn

He might have lived in a barn

He made a poetry thread

But now it might be dead

He bumped with the hopes of reviews

But no one seems to want to give it a view

So Peanut composed this piece

To make Zarn not cease

Because I like your Poetry

[Zarn Ishtare]

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem". Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States.


Reagan you liar
the faceless legions require
you to answer me this
"were our lives meaningless?"

[Zarn Ishtare]

Poetry
coming
soon.

[ABlipinTime]

There once was a poet named Zarn
who made threads as long as yarn
But coming upon page fourteen
Peanut slipped a poem in between

[Zarn Ishtare]

Everything I own
Everything I am
is borrowed.

Someday,

I'll give it all back.

[Peanut]

I'm having some real difficulty commentening on your poems Zarn. Its not that they are bad or good, its just I can't really think of anything to say about them. It might be the length even though, content wise, there's a good bit in them like your previous ones. Welp, I'll try anyway.

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem". Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States.


Reagan you liar
the faceless legions require
you to answer me this
"were our lives meaningless?"

The poem's a good response to the quote you listed. It gets the idea you are presenting off pretty well and rather quickly. The ending doesn't leave things particularly open which is fine for something like this.

Poetry
coming
soon.

I wish this was a poem.

There once was a poet named Zarn
who made threads as long as yarn
But coming upon page fourteen
Peanut slipped a poem in between

The once was a member called ABlipinTime
Who did his very best to rhyme
But try as he might
he couldn't get it quite right
and he missed the joke entirely.

Everything I own
Everything I am
is borrowed.

Someday,

I'll give it all back.

I like how you did your pacing in this one. It gets to the point pretty quickly but I feel like you could do a little more with it. The context for this is so broad it maybe could use like one or two more lines. But as is its pretty good.

[Zarn Ishtare]

I look at all the people
not looking at each other
pluralism pluralism
everyone's the same.

Stop all your nonsense
not everything is true

[Zarn Ishtare]

"Tentatively"


Tentatively

I am reaching out

Pardon me though

my voice is not the same.


Pieces of phrases I used to say

are all scattered in my mouth

I'm searching for the thing to say

looking inside, and out.



There is no way yet

to put upon the page

all my feeling, my pure feeling

be it happiness or rage.



So now with worn out words

I satisfy my curse.

And leave you with one more piece

of unimportant verse.

[Zarn Ishtare]

"Veteran's Dilemma"


When I went to war

there was silence in heaven

and silence on the phone.

No hair, no hope;

I had a bad-haircut war.

My beard was dirty

but so was the rest of me.

At least, that one time.

When I went to war,

people asked "Why?"

and other's went about their business

America was at the mall that day, there was a sale!


It was the no-one, no-where war

TV did not know where we were

The Kardashian's were giving an interview!

The Donald had a speech.


I went to war with ashes in my mouth

I went to war with an untrustworthy friend.

I took a call-home card to war

but I didn't use it

I could just dial local.


My stomach was small when I left

I returned...ravenous.



I miss my sunny tent,

and the bright stars, like 'heaven's spears'

the bickering and the joking,

the cigar smoke and cigarettes.


So if You're listening

and I'm not too sure

if it's not too much trouble

Can I go back to war?

[Zarn Ishtare]

"All or Nothing"



You are lying.

You don't always want to break free.

Fetters of warm beds and easy days

You don't always want to live fearlessly.


The coward hunts in you too,

the soul of clay, the gourd along the ground

You are not so extreme

it's not always "All Or Nothing."

[Zarn Ishtare]

I read about the stars,

but looked up into an empty sky.

the curse of a city with no identity

and their cacophony of lights.

[Peanut]

I'm not a huge fan of the first one. I think its a bit to simple in a bad sort of way.

I like "Tentatively" a lot. I don't really have anything else to say about this one besides that.

I find "Veteran's Dilemma" interesting in light of some of your other pieces. It has a strange sense of nostalgia in it namely from the line "Can I go back to war?" You usually don't hear that and it could be read as somewhat controversial by certain people. So yeah, this is probably my favorite piece of your recent set.

I think All or Nothing could have used a little bit more content. It seems to move just too fast when I read it.

Cacophony of lights? Is this going to be the Zarn Ishtare photography thread? I kid. I like this piece more then your other shorter ones in this set. I feel like its a bit more of your style and there's enough in there that I don't mind the length.

[Zarn Ishtare]

thanks! I'm glad you liked Veteran's Dilemma, the rest were all just kinda coming at me, and so I wrote it before I lost it.

[Zarn Ishtare]

Not poetry: I'm beginning to get a fascination with words that really is going to ruin me. I'm communicating less and less with alot of this stuff; I really would rather the reader just get it, the emotion; the words almost don't matter. The written word lacks the verbal context; I could say the word touch a thousand different ways and mean a thousand different things. But in my mind, it would be poetry; it would have the emotional context to me to know what I mean...the struggle is conveying that emotional context! Poetry is hard.




Touch (tentatively)
Rush (liberally)
Thrust (timidly)
Trust (completely)
Must.

Or to make more poetic-y:

Tentatively I touch your face
a rush runs through me
hand thrust out I brush your hair
In complete trust, no need for confirmation
Must I ever leave this moment?


Describing an angel:

poor and pale, on a plain of white
porcelain skin, hunger-frail
luminous diamonds set in sheet cheeks
open wide, taking everything in.


On the Pouring of Wine:

Liberal, but slow. Better for the color,
carried from the vine to our vignette
A breath before the kiss,
the story of a moment
before the drink.

"Describing a Mental Scene"

Radio pours the music through the device
pounding silver feet on a platinum stage
illumination radiates across the stereophonic spectrum
frequency irradiates the planet with sound
the boom blast transcends the high hat
The music becomes the message.


"On Listening to a Blues Song"

Tapping the drums, "chock, chock"
the rhythm sections stretches out
hands tapping at neckboard
knocking on the wood frame.
Beat, repeat, beat, repeat
lyricists lay the lyrics over the thing
beat and repeat
chorus.

[Zarn Ishtare]

There's far too much to capture. That's the crux of the problem. There's too much muchness, too much to capture even a speck of the entire thing. That's the challenge, I know, but it doesn't make it easier. I spend more focus on these little things now; it's not because the big bombastic stuff has lost any stock with me, but I'm trying to scale down my goal to something remotely approaching reachable. If I can describe for you, perfectly, everything that goes into touching a woman's hair, or smiling while seeing the wrinkles on your parents faces, and all that that entails, I will be a poet. But for me to keep trying to explain the whole thing? Like love, or the importance of music? Impossible. To describe love is the task of all poets so inclined, throughout all of history; and when the very last one of us dies off, maybe we will have communicated it sufficiently. I don't know.

If I can touch you by describing the way a cold pebble sits in your hand, with your palm lines and skin as a backdrop; how it shakes with the unsteadiness of hands that have worked all day, how it is utterly unimportant while being utterly unique...if I can make you feel that, then I will be satisfied. But even that is an Everest!

[Peanut]

You could just get me to do more dramatic readings of your poetry.

Going back to being serious, that is the really difficult part of poetry especially since you are trying to say a lot in fewer words then prose. Even in prose its an issue but in poetry its even more so. It might help to just get really experimental and ask specifically what emotions your critics feel while reading said pieces. Then narrow it down to a style that fits you and gets across what you want to get across.

[Zarn Ishtare]

Well, Peanut, as my audience, how do some of the last few poems make you feel?

[Zarn Ishtare]

Let me tell you a story
about a man named Jack O' the Moon.
he's witty and funny, but doesn't have much money
and is unfortunately crazy as a loon

Like the great Gaels of Ireland,
God has made him Mad
for all his wars were merry
and all his songs are sad.

They say he looked too long,
they say he spoke to soon
and so he fell to madness
Like in that movie Platoon.

He saw the multitudinous strings
he saw the eight-fold ten thousand things
but none of it was more than ephemera
Plastic and fake as a cafeteria spoon!

So our brave hero goes on
not quite right, and not quite wrong
and he'll reveal the truth of the universe
just as soon as he figures it out.


So goes the tale of Jack O' The Moon
Spoke too late and looked too soon
and saw what everyone was speaking on
the ghostly trappings of the imagined life
that is all very real on the surface
but underneath
Nothing much was really going on

and he broke the meter
and tried to apologize
but it was done.

So goes the tale of Jack O' The Moon.