I’m Your Poet

I had no investment in failure

Even now as I am surrounded
drowned out
eclipsed by lesser minds of the
compromised
those contrived by contumacious
diplomacy

whose only requirement is for
their names to be added
to the roles of individuals
called as typical of the times

the committee
of the designated in this century
admired and feted
for what they supposedly suggest

I did not cave in
under the subtle torment of fresh
anonymity

or the fact that I’d be rescued
if only I could be blessed
by those who confess to nothing

absent ideas
somehow satisfied to betray
everything they do not represent

©Dean Baker

my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

“An inspired set of poems. Dean gets to the essence of a subject.”

IF YOU CAN, IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED

NEW BOOKS COMING SOON

SHADOW BOXING THE INFINITE

THE NEW POETRY HOTEL

STEEL BUTTERFLIES

and

PHANTOMS OF THE NORTHERN FORESTS

My Heart A Fist

All around was destruction and futility,
my heart become a stone centering this, now
target of opportunity knowing I must
escape the closed fist clenched against
what had already crept in unannounced

except by sleeplessness amid alien shifts
of those who would not welcome anything
but all must prove obedient and adrift
while a longing for what had been pleasant,
uncomplicated and feeling missed

remained signals of the slow collapse of all
absences compressed into the mist, the
invisibility, a loss too pronounced
to be defined by sentiment capturing it
into anything else but representatives

of the good and true and beautiful
not masquerading as anything but themselves
free above the landscapes looked upon,
subject not to the evil minions of trivialities
raised up and worshipped senselessly

in an obsession with decay and cowardice
captives of all that’s ancient and untrue, yet
aware that flight is song and life not death-in-waiting
nor the traditional suicide of massed conformity
of minds closed and refusing the abyss

©Dean Baker

from a forthcoming book, Phantoms Of The Northern Forests

my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

“An inspired set of poems. Dean gets to the essence of a subject.”

IF YOU CAN, IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED

NEW BOOKS COMING SOON

SHADOW BOXING THE INFINITE

THE NEW POETRY HOTEL

STEEL BUTTERFLIES

and

PHANTOMS OF THE NORTHERN FORESTS

Be Yourself

Be yourself they say, and every asshole
celebrates their swiss-cheese personalities
of family dysfunction, bullying
sociopathic disease and invert tendencies.

Those involved in ersatz philosophy
and the imitations of thought jump for joy
but not far enough at the simplicity
granted to save them from further savagery.

Be of good cheer each hopes to hear
while desiring to punch the listening ear,
the open mouth chewing cud noisily,
the lack of manners and sick breeding.

Love me for who I am each proclaims,
I have your back the better to slip
the knife between ribs, with Novocain since
this will hurt me more than you I say gloriously.

The dead in the audience have not heard,
yet applaud entertainment removing
them from the arms of reality
where they cannot breathe and worship murder

oh so religiously.

©Dean Baker https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

©All Rights Reserved
deanbakerpoetryandsongs.com

NEW BOOKS COMING SOON

SHADOW BOXING THE INFINITE

THE NEW POETRY HOTEL

STEEL BUTTERFLIES

and

PHANTOMS OF THE NORTHERN FORESTS

©Dean Baker

https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

©All Rights Reserved
deanbakerpoetryandsongs.comV

In The Garden

Your scent on me lingers,
so sweetly I imagine,
it’s changing my fingerprints,
transforming my identity

Leaving me with another aura,
than the one I had
when we first met, and
confessed to making love

Until there’s no resemblance
to the man I was –
the person I now am,
the one who wishes, again

To enter you, and drink
from this fountain of youth,
while you taste
of the hidden knowledge

forbidden fruit, paradisiacal bliss

https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

Abandonment

The past is longer than the future can be. Winters
are now limited, as are the beautiful mild and temperate
days of May.
My personal calendar has switched from notching months or weeks.
Years now represent decades. All the holidays fade toward permanent vacation.
Nothing of bad measure becomes an unexpected surprise.

Wild women or forward men are no longer even incidents
that did not happen to another. Society itself has become
an idiot child, pablumed and cooing, diaper full.
Money a wish for more than less, waning with it the
benefits of better health and food, less stress, even friends.

You know who’s speaking, should you so choose.
Under that snow, poised for flight; that pile of clothes, the vanished
take refuge in plain sight among the fiercely knowledgeable.

Look closely. They leave nothing whether they remain, or go.

https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

‘Oxymorons’

Your place
to be with me

And mine
to be where you are

You, nor I
can share:
our destiny between the wars

So alone again:
amid
the crowds of friends

https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

‘Day Breaks’

The sciatic twinge is but an ache
if I move or wake which I do lately
since a tweak or twist
lifts boards that creak and break, allowing
in floods of light and bugs that bite
while the puppy shifts in her cage
suggesting rage as I raise the coffee cup
beneath the rare Redwood tree
in its imperiousness and disdain
as one more day dawns from fractured sleep
the lawns cut forest paths against

Coyotes howling where deer watch the foxes
cross and cry as snakes slumber
like broken twigs
while duties have yet to arise to interfere
with the stilled calm I don’t name
in this prayer of love I ask to change
the direction in which the smoke
from fires rearranged will float and drift
then blow to call the living into shape
as though my spirit meets your own
without thoughts of what is or may be known

my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

“An inspired set of poems. Dean gets to the essence of a subject.”

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my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

“An inspired set of poems. Dean gets to the essence of a subject.”

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