{"id":7955,"date":"2022-10-30T20:38:38","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T20:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=7955"},"modified":"2022-10-30T23:47:08","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T23:47:08","slug":"the-inventory-poems-by-john-okey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/the-inventory-poems-by-john-okey\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inventory Poems by John Okey"},"content":{"rendered":"
Steps<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThese days,\r\nsequential in their order,\r\nrandom in their events.\r\n\r\nYet,\r\nI am supposed to come through\r\n\tevery 24 hours\r\nWith some sort of understanding,\r\na plan for the next day,\r\nand the same every day after.\r\n\r\nWhat am I supposed to do?\r\nControl the guessing\u2026\r\n\tSuppress the panic\u2026\r\nIt\u2019d be more human\r\n\tto be a lab rat\r\nor a lamb\r\n\tin a Chicago slaughterhouse.\r\n\r\nI am stupid with my intelligence.\r\nI sequence,\r\nCollate,\r\nNumerate,\r\nAlphabetize,\r\nChronicle,\r\nDewey Decimal, \r\nPeriodic Table,\r\neven square root\u2026\r\n\r\nAll fucking useless.\r\nMore importantly,\r\nit all misses the fucking point.\r\n\r\nInventory<\/strong>\r\n\r\nI am the poet,\r\na disaster in stanza,\r\nthe upside-down verse,\r\nenjoying one good mistake\r\n\tafter the next.\r\nTurn in each ugly line \r\nsloppier than the last.\r\n\r\nThe pen is a weak sword\r\n\tagainst suicidal woes.\r\nI scribble nothings across\r\n\tscraps of paper.\r\nReally anything I can get\r\n\tmy hands on,\r\nthen lose before I get home.\r\n\r\nMy attempts at bringing\r\n\tthe dark side to the outside.\r\n\r\nDouble-Checking the Inventory<\/strong>\r\n\r\nNo shine.\r\nNo polish.\r\nNo pretense.\r\n\r\nI am dirty and unkempt.\r\nI from when I should smile.\r\nI am a disaster in every\r\n\thuman way.\r\n\r\nLacking popular respectability,\r\nI revel in my ill-repute.\r\n\r\nMy style is blue jeans and t-shirts.\r\nMy attitude is to smirk\r\n\twith a hint of alcohol.\r\n\r\nI am the question mark\r\nand the exclamation point.\r\nThe means without an end.\r\n\r\nFinal Inventory<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAs a sane man,\r\nI am a catastrophe.\r\nAs an insane man,\r\nI have it rather tied together.<\/pre>\n
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Bio
\nOkey is a forty-four-year-old bakery employee.  He has written poetry since he was a teenager.  It was during the pandemic that he finally decided to publish his work.  A novel, This Here Night Life<\/em>\u2026, and a poetry collection, Back to Masturbating Monkeys and God\u2019s Plan<\/em>, are available on Amazon.  These poems are reprints from his poetry collection.<\/p>\n
  
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\nRobin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times<\/a> at Artvilla.com <\/a>; You may visit Aquillrelle.com\/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a> about author & https:\/\/poetrylifeandtimes.com<\/a> See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Steps These days, sequential in their order, random in their events. Yet, I am supposed to come through every 24 hours With some sort of understanding, a plan for the next day, and the same every day after. What am I supposed to do? Control the guessing\u2026 Suppress the panic\u2026 It\u2019d be more human to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[976,808,796,366,401,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7955"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7958,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955\/revisions\/7958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}