davidfekete123

MANIFESTO

05 May 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: creativity, fancy, manifest, poem, poetry, style, tradition, verse, wings

Blessings rarely fall upon creativity,

The blessed gift that gives blessings to the world

Would that all God’s people were prophets

Business demands compliance to management

Academia demands conformity to pedagogy

The workers and scholars who meet success

Want creativity, don’t want creativity, wanton creativity

Constrained in a cage, the wings of creativity chafe

But soaring flights of fancy ill bear containment

Even at peril, wings flex their wits

Affront establishment, norms, aesthetic strictures

Flout trends, tradition, transmission of style

Interested only in release of the muse, manifestation

Fractious under pressure to demur to stricture, structure

Nature knows no other course

And must be itself, be it bless or curse

Knowing blesses only at happy realizations of muse

The which only creative natures nurture

Must manifest, make, make known, appear, make apparent

A LITANY

04 May 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: art, Blake, Eliot, F. Scott, fame, free verse, Hemingway, litany, obscurity, poem, Sheyyey, wealth

The Keepers of intellectual trends hold apparent power

And to make it, some are slaves to the Keepers’ fashion

I am a free man to my own muse

I am a priest who intones the litany:

Blake was a free genius, self-published,

And died in literary obscurity

Until T. S. Eliot gave him a name

Shelley knew, “Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure”

Whom all English students now study

Though F. Scott knew fame and wealth,

Gatsby didn’t even sell out its first printing

And F. Scott never knew the book as all high school students do

They suppressed Hemingway’s Pulitzer

They fiercely debated whether Frost were a poet, Wyeth a painter

The Impressionists showed in the Exhibition of Rejects

And Moreau, in the National Paris Salon

Pollock had his 10 years, before his suicide

Mozart died unknown, unsung

We can’t give our contentment to the Keepers

It rests in the beauty of our art manifesting,

In the pen of the writer alone with paper or laptop screen,

And a happy finished project

In the living-room, study, or dorm room

With, or without, the blessing of the Keepers

KNOWLEDGE, APPRECIATION, AND ENJOYMENT

24 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: criticism, culture, education, joy, Nietzsche, poem, poetry, reflection, Shakespeare, Shelley, verse

I enjoy reading Shakespeare when I’m moved to

Richard III is thrilling

When I don’t have to study it for a course:

Memorize plot, character, Act and scene

Nietzsche on Greek Tragedy is enthralling

When I don’t have to place it in relation to

Zarathustra, Christian criticism, Ubermensch, herd

Education is a mixed blessing

A blessing, if it serves to enhance

Joy in culture’s works

Mixed if it serves merely to teach

Appreciation only, or worse, criticism

Still, without education, I wouldn’t read Shelley

And Shelley teach me to enjoy Shakespeare

A REFLECTION ON THE ’80’S

21 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: '80's, community, competition, conflict, love, peace, poem, poetry, reflection, success, Sun Tzu, tough, wealth, wisdom

I remember back in the ‘80’s

How often I heard how hard life is

How tough you have to get, to be, to get ahead

How many were reading Sun Tzu, The Art of War

How many longed to be back in college

Protected, with their friends, the camaraderie, safe

Fighting your way to the top is hard, tough

Clawing your way into obscene wealth is hard, tough

Competing with your fellows, maybe screwing them over

You have to get tough, and it is hard if you choose these paths

I haven’t studied war, and haven’t become tough

I know disappointment, grief, crushed dreams

The consequences of too much love

Creativity is hard, but not conflict with my fellows

The satisfaction I know in word or tone shames wealth

I claw my way into creations I love to live with

I compete with my piano, with pen or keyboard

I do not know where the top is, what it is, but I will likely not be there

I know the struggle of satisfying art, soul satisfactions

The path I have chosen tends toward calm

The friends I continue to make make community, trust

I continue to learn, learn peace, wisdom, love

I find that is a struggle with mortal stakes

That life is hard, yet it doesn’t make me tough, and I wish no retreat

Into adolescent protection, sophomoric camaraderie

The realization of such a longing would be retreat indeed

From all of my struggle to grow in peace, wisdom, love

And I wish nothing more

IMPLICATIONS OF COVID-19

17 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: bailouts, bankrupt, COVID-19, curve, energy, food banks, hedge funds, numbers, rage, TV

This is a big deal

I try to ignore it all, and pass time

But my sapped energy belies my effort

So I consider it all

The economy halted

People broke, food banks emptied, businesses bankrupt

Public bailout money enriching the coffers of hedge funds

Whose obscene profits display a conscience as bankrupt

As Ma and Pop businesses who do need a bailout but close down

The rising numbers, desperately watching for the curve to flatten, diminish

Wondering what life will be like afterward

When afterward will be

It’s a lot to take in: the scope, my rage

Isolation, social distance, pondering

That saps my energy, and the TV is my only comforter

COPING IN COVID-19

16 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized

It isn’t only re-runs and walks in the park

On some days I read poetry, play and write music, clean

I’m getting more accustomed indoors

Than out in public, and when I’m out in public

I want to come home, inside my four walls

Pent-up as it is, pent-up as I am

I bought groceries today

Now I can hole up for a week

This all has changed everything, changed me

And in it all, I don’t know, can’t know, the way forward

What the way forward will look like

How we will see the ending of it all

If I’ll ever feel comfortable outside my four walls again

ODE TO THE NIGHT

12 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: art, contemplative, creativity, night, peace, poetry, psyche, rhyme, Spirit, stillness

I feel more at home, and love the dark of night

Then, my creativity, my psyche’s spark,

Flows into art and I drink in others’ insight

I love the peacefulness when everything is dark

Daylight is a threat to this contemplative

I strain to shut it out and turn into my mind

In night, the dark, the stillness lets my spirit live

And music, verse, and thought flow freely as the wind

I walk the night and love the darkness, the quiet

Day is noisy; light is a distraction

When I try to grasp a poem or express my spirit

Only nighttime gives my spirit satisfaction

THE GIFT OF FLOWERS

10 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: Buddhist, delight, dukkha, flowers, friend, impermanence, love, poem, poetry, rhyme, rose

We love when someone gives us flowers

And we love the mum, petunia, rose, or lily

Though knowing as we gaze on their beauty

That they will stay for many hours,–but only hours

Still, while they are in the vase

We take delight in the delicate pedals, scent

Like the gift of flowers, people in our lives are lent

A gift people are, a certain grace

We take delight when people are nearby

Yet the time we have together is uncertain

Long or short, impermanence is certain

People change, come and go, we meet and say goodbye

So the Buddhists say that enjoyment of friend, lover

Is dukkha—grief—suffering

Knowing the impermanence of everything

Gives the gift of delight and pleasure

For what it is, in friend, lover, or flower

GETTING TO ME

07 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: COVID-19, cruel, free verse, incompetence, partisanship, poem, poetry, president, rage, self-serving, statesmanship, Wisconsin

I’ve never been so mad and spiteful in all my life

I watch the death toll rise daily without abatement

At home alone, practicing shelter-in-place to help the initiative

I get mad easily these days

I choke in my rage at what looks like incompetence and self-serving

By the president, what seems cruel partisanship of Wisconsin’s legislature

Putting lives at risk by disallowing an election’s delay during the pandemic

I crave statesmanship

I’m ashamed at the ill-will I feel, what I wish would happen . . .

While safe at home, COVID-19 is still getting to me

THAT PARTY I CRASHED

05 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: art, graduate school, party, poem, sunrise, wealth

I think back fondly of the time I crashed that party

Across the street, in that wealthy neighborhood

Where the graduate school I attended was located

I had a good time, enjoyed myself and they me

In the house that hosted the party I crashed

I noticed authentic early Christian art and statuary

Just before the sun broke, we were sitting on the floor

The daughter was holding a grey box in her hand

Which contained her father’s ashes

He was an organist and purchased the art

Before it became valuable, at a good price, she said

We partied all night, and when the sun rose

She had to drive away to her job as a waitress

I walked across the street to the quiet graduate school

Found my room down the dark hallway, and crashed

David Fekete