“Sometimes It’s Hard To Know” (Prose)

Two older men laughing and drinking at a busy pub table

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Sometimes it’s hard to know if you are wasting your life or not.

You see it’s not so cut & dry to know.

In the “standard delusion of the masses case” you are supposed to be an office slave.

And of course everyone has to pretend they are not selling their lives just to exist.

In Slave-o-land everyone’s gotta pretend they are working on a ‘career’.

And if you don’t do that in a big city you have to accept being ‘hated on’ by the other slaves.

Yes – you can be a poor slave with a ‘shit job’ in a big city but you can’t dare smile.

The ‘career slaves’ can’t dare mix with the ‘self aware slaves’.

For anyone with a shit job with shit pay but can also laugh is someone to be deeply suspicious of.

You see the ‘career slaves’ think they are better than the ‘no career slaves’.

It really is fucked up.

That in this world slavery is sliced and diced and also has many layers like an onion.

Their are ‘upper class slaves’,

Middle class slaves,

And ‘lower class slaves’.

And each main class has it’s sub-classes.

For example an upper class slave working at a University sneers at the biz exec slave and vice versa.

There are a million other subtypes like this but I won’t bore you – if your reading this you know already.

yes pals – it’s Slave-o-land and its banal everyday ways is the standard undeclared insanity of our times.

And Bukowski summed it up well when he said this:

“Slavery never ended it was just expanded to include all the colors”.

If you are wondering what type of slave I am, I will just say this:

I’m the one who knows he’s a slave and does his best to ‘steal’ a few hours on the sly.

This mostly takes the form of laughing in it’s wrinkly bloodless disapproving mask-countenance.

You see I’m onto it all and ‘have bin’ most my life – even when I office-slummed it for a decade.

I also don’t care that the career slaves that don’t know it all hate me and my type.

You see in this soul crushing slave system your only hope is see the loophole,

Just into them, take a free snooze & shout “fuck you” to the career slaves.

Of course I want them to know they are slaves and careers are an illusion.

That’s why I wrote this piece, after all.

But the problem is that most of them don’t read.

They are too strung out and tired from the accoutrements of modern career slavery.

Which is of course all part of the social-prison-cell-system.

But a few of them do read,

So this is aimed at them.

And if you die in a ditch while reaching for a loophhole –

Is that really that bad an outcome, relatively speaking?

At least the ditch is an honest no frills place to hang out.

And the kids and the cats do it all the time without a second thought.

Of course I am probably over romanticising the ditching of modern slavery.

I have probably over counted the number of loopholes available at any one given time.

So it would be remiss to not admit that escaping the beast of modern slavery is no mean feat –

But at the very least – people should know that careers are a scam to enslave.

If you know that at least you have something to rebel against.

Of course the ills of graduating from being to a ‘slave’ to a ‘slave master’ is prose for tomorrow.

Damn I’ve written another depression piece of writing again haven’t I?

How Schopenhauer of me.

How Bukowski of me.

I wonder if those two would have got on or not?

Probably but you never know.

I wouldn’t mind a boozy night with them both.

This Little ‘Erbert Said To That Little ‘Erbert” ( Witty Poem)

Man and pregnant woman talking outside a London pub with speech bubbles

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwriter@gmail.com

This little ‘Erbert

Said to that little ‘Erbert

“Shall we name ‘im “Little ‘Erbert?”

That little ‘Erbert

Said to This little ‘Erbert

Don’t be an ‘Erbert what if its a girl?

There ain’t no way I’m ‘avin’ a girl named ‘Erbert!, you ‘Erbert.

This little ‘Erbert

Said the that little ‘Erbert

Ok we’ll call her ‘erbert-ella then

That little ‘Erbert

Said to this little ‘Erbert

“You ain’t such an ‘Erbert after all”

This Little ‘Erbert

Said To That little ‘Erbert

I concur duly my fellow ‘Erbert,

‘Owever’

‘Ow does one even ‘ave sex these days?…

…Let alone ‘ave a baby”

“An Ode To Intellectual Honesty” (A Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

NZ (among other nations) has an affliction much worse than The Black Plague.

It is a persistent ‘built in’ shyness.

A built in reclusiveness that is robust to attack.

As a ‘liker of ideas’ this my friends and enemies – this is no good.

I want to be able to share ideas freely.

Here in NZ everyone is too afraid of sharing intellectual ideas.

And if they do it is often corrupted by cultish like political tribalism.

This is why I saw a ‘open night poetry’ advertisement that had a warning:

(& to summarise it via paraphrase)

“We want it to be safe so no ‘hate speech’ is allowed”.

This is what I am talking about.

Even poetry – which is supposed to be the (last) bastion of any and everyone’s ‘Truth’ –

Is now casually conscripted into quasi-national-socialist-literary-Brownshirt-ism.

People who haven’t seen either a mirror or their own shadow do condemn so drop-hat-ingly.

I see it as a total fear of having your mind changed by someone different and original.

And until NZ allows its artists and writers to ‘do art’ and ‘write words’,

We will continue to wallow in backward socio-cultural-mediocrity-land,

Where you dare not question the censorship laced tired dull unoriginal tribal company line.

One day people will wake up to all this.

My optimistic guess is sometime in the year 3036.

Where it will be safe to go to an open poetry night,

And share your mind freely with a wild array of formerly unacceptable conjectures,

And neither be applauded roundly or chastised drably.

You will simply be listened to and then a fantastic member of the audience,

Will be interested to purely and intellectually talk of their ideas and yours over a giant pint.

Of course this still sporadically happens even now,

But only as rarely as a inordinately cheap classic at the second hand bookstore is found.

But we controversial conjectorial thinker types cannot be beaten easily.

Like the virus that survived the traumatic trip to outer space under on a phillips-head screw,

We will too will survive to cough out (spontaneous emit) our acerbic & strangely colored lines.

(Much to their chagrin).

This was my ode to that priceless currently invisible concept: ‘intellectual honesty’.

“Kiwi Schoolboy-Like Observations Of Australia” (A Poem + Bonus Material)

By by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

                                     If Australia gets too much worse 
                            I predict around the year 2032 it'll change it's name 
                                     from Australia to "Smellstraaya" 
                                      The new capital?:"Schmelbourne" 
                                      The new PM?: "Iyamba B. Smelly' (From Broken Hill)
                                    The New Winter Sport "Smelly Rules"
                      The New Summer Sport? Cricket (The Gentelman's Game will not change)                                       
                                 TL:DR #Australia stop convicting yerselves... 
                                      OR IT WILL BE A BIG SMELLY MESS...
                              Apart From The Next ASHE'S Series (Go England) 
                      #Austrlaia Now Please Be A Good Fellow And Unconvict yourselves!
                                 Just Think Of The Tee Shirt When You Do:
                        I Stopped Australia From Stinking.....
                                           .....And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt.    

Bonus Material What does the new WordPress AI Podcast Bot think of this Poem? Listen below!

“The Poet-Vigilante Vs The Toolbox-Poet: Who will win?” (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

‘Writers Block’
Is very handy.
For Example:
When you meet someone who doesn’t read?
Out Comes The Block.
You asked the said non-reader to close their eyes.
Then….
!Whack!
Rough justice employed.

Another example:
You are at a poetry reading.
You come across the “toolbox poet”.
They’ve had an easy life.
Their parents are (of course) still together, upper middle class types.
Their progeny is this ‘toolbox poet’.
It is they that is trifecta-masacre-ing you’re brain, eyes, and ears,
Has never known poverty or genuine struggle.
Is quite possibly what the Americans refer to as a ‘Trust-Fund Baby’.

Alas ‘Toolbox Poets’ – They have nothing to say,
Yet yield Hiroshima like damage on new poetic pastures, usually in urban locales.
They use ‘form’ like a mega-sledgehammer.
They use rhyme far too much and for no good reason.
Their empty platitudes flow like the cheap tract-nouveau-riche-wine,
Delivered to their and their parents friends pristine well swept doorsteps,
Like the badge of copy-cat-ism-style of dishonor it surely is.

The ‘Toolbox Poet’ not knowing what truth is – uses hearty dollops of ‘false mystery’.
‘False mystery’ is the poetic version of verbal sophistry –
Basically they use empty-misjoint-imagery spoken with faux gravitas,
To swindle audiences who have not yet purchased ‘intellectual imposter glasses’.

So where was I?

Yes let me backtrack to ‘Writer’s Block’ (the non-metaphoric physically real kind).
‘Writers block’ comes in handy with run-ins with the ‘Toolbox Poet’ set.
And as my prescriptive advice,
Simply throw said block from the very ‘back of the back’ of said room,
Ideally throw from behind a billowy curtain or from an appropriate alcove.
Aim for the trajectory to have a nicely curved parabola, but not too curved –
less it miss its mark – i.e. the Toolbox Poets ‘schnoz’.
Too flat a trajectory – and you risk hitting the audience.
Watch this glorious ‘Writers Block’ fly with feeling-imbued-slow-ity through the air,
Until it completely nulify’s the ‘toolbox poet’ in mid-bad-stanza,
Mid-bad-imagery-rhyme & mid-flowery-false-platitude.
And Congrats! You hit with a bullseye’d ‘schnoz splashdown’
(NB: in the event that you missed? – Abort mission & stay behind said curtain or alcove & whistle quietly).

And for when the audience turns around post successful ‘Toolbox Poet’ assassination & wonders what has happened?
Well you just stand there sans curtain, whistle quietly & hold your hands behind your back,
Contemplating your next ‘writers block attack’.
Yes my friends of good and great writing –
Contrary to popular sentiment –
As I have outlined in detail above,
‘Writer’s Block’ comes in very handy.
In this the stolen-valor-filled-faux-literary-world.
Yes the valiant soldier wielding the ‘Writer’s Block’ is a poet-not-just-a-poet,
But is also a well battle scarred poverty knowing poet-vigilante,
Who’s parents duly hated each others guts and then in five to ten got truthfully divorced.
And in so doing accidently created a glorious poet-vigilante,
Willing to swiftly and parabolically destroy the high-crimes-of-poetic-dastardry –
Wherever the ‘Toolbox Poet’ plies this evil solipsistic trade,
Or doth present their oversized probably-open-mic’d-big-target-wearing-schnoz.

Hazaar to the Poet-Vigilante & his mighty non-aerodynamic ‘Writer’s Block’.
Hopefully he is not deluded,
Hopefully he is not living in a fantasy world of his own choice,
Hopefully he is not merely ‘projecting’ some twisted internal trauma based misery.
Hopefully he has met his ‘Jungian shadow’ and now gets on not just like a ‘house on fire’,
But as the houses warm embers the day after the house was on fire.
Oh yes – I know what you’re thinking.
It would be a shame if this ‘poet vigilante’ I speak of was in fact ‘dead wrong’ –
For all this would be a waste of time and a total ‘all encompassing lie’.
It would be an exercise in acute effrontery (which is definitely not cute).
But surely not – surely he is not then a ‘Poet Terrorist’.
Surely not dear highly-intelligent-literary-loving and truth loving avid reader!
After all – we’ve all seen the multitudes of ‘Toolbox Poets’ that abound –
The ones that litter the urban poet-scapes like maimed-and-hobbling-town-square-pigeons?
I ask of you dear discerning reader of near angelic virtue – have we not seen them everywhere?
Of course we have….Of course we have…..Of course we have.
I’d stake my very reputation on it.
And let me give you the tip –
That’s worth more than a few cases of ‘Smith’s Luxurious Highly-Blunted Flying Writer’s Blocks’.

“Open Letter: Hey poet – Don’t steal Buk’s stellar 30 year Work Record”

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com

I called out a fellow Buk fan & I was ‘blocked’.

This fellow Antipodean Poet also loves Buk.

Like me he mentions him all the time.

Sidebar:You can love Bukowski AND not like some of his bad drunken behavior.

That’s cool.

I applaud him for recognizing Buk’s literary genius.

BUT he ruins it all by doing this:

He tells his audience that he’s essentially ‘just like Buk’.

BUT

He has a patchy at best work record.

More holes in his CV than swiss cheese.

His dole check to work week ratio cannot have more than two-fifths MAX.

YET

He implies to his audience that he’s been working “thirty years straight in shit jobs just like Buk”.

Look, my Antipodean-warmer-climes-fellow-GenX-Pal,

Poetry is supposed to be about Truth.

Poets are supposed to be Truthful above all else.

None of this ‘Stolen Work Record Valor’ OK?

Oh did I mention?

In between the holes he was a ‘Marketing Man’.

Marketing Men love to lie to get results.

So what I would say to you oh ‘Fake Antipodean Buk’ is this:

If your were a true Poet,

Bernaysian Chicanery wouldn’t rule your tongue.

The Truth would.

Deep down I think you know this,

And are wondering about the sword of Damocles.

Or should I saw ‘The sword of Buk’?

Huh?

Riddle me that oh you Poetic antipodean hybrid of Bernays & Goebels.

But I am a reasonable man,

I am willing to throw you this crumb:

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong,

For there has always been scammy poets.

Who don’t give a rats about the Truth.

So perhaps you are a ‘poet’.

With a ‘small p’.

I implore you to capitalize your P forthwith – by admitting you were lazy with real world jobs.

And that’s why you hardly worked at all.

After all that is no sin to admit – in fact that’s honorable.

A ‘Big P Poet’ would definitely do this.

They might even wear it as a ‘badge of honor”.

But you lie about it, and suggest you grind-worked every day from age twenty to fifty –

‘Just like Buk did’.

That’s called intellectual dishonesty my friend.

And no Cap P Poet ever does this treasonous act.

And I’m sure BUK would agree.

He would say this:

“Be the hero in and of your own story YES – but don’t dare write about someone else pal”.

“A Gen X Prescription” ( A Poem)

By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@martinantonsmith

When a Gen X’er complains, 

Of too much stress and worry,

And of acute overwork 

Why does this said rent-a-doc,

Not prescribe the following,

One hundred percent  guaranteed cure? :

 

Patient to sit alone in a dark room,

On a comfy bed or highly cushioned chair,

Sip a beverage of choice intermittently,

While Listening to 80s/90s CDs,

All on a quality component hi-fi stereo.

 

If pain persists beyond the first two hours,

Patient is to crank out their vinyl records,

And or cassette tapes if needed,

Open another beverage,

The mind will calm believing it’s not yet 1999

“Disembodied hearts (have all the fun?)” / (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Sometimes a dove is in your heart, but a cat is lurking – so it can’t come out right now.

Sometimes your heart is a flower unfolding, but the sun didn’t rise today.

Sometimes your heart is a drum, but no one can find the drumsticks anywhere.

Sometimes your heart has been stood on, squashed, flattened – but it’s really just waiting for resurrection.

Most of the time writing about…

Your own heart…

Or Someone else’s heart…

Namely it being broken etc –

Means you have probably written a fucking awful thing.

Because you’ve risked being just another bland asshole talking of ‘love”.

And it is because I know this, & so I let it be known, and I almost never write of things of the heart,

That you will know I mean it.

I promise you these are not ‘bland assholes love lyrics type 17a clause iii’.

I used to say you were cold hearted & perhaps I was right –

But to say ‘you’re cold hearted’ is a C- analysis not the A+ one.

For is it ‘cold-heartedness’ or is it ‘correct survival mechanisms of a battle hardened nervous system?’

But on that level, I know that I was more than ‘cold hearted’ too.

I hope both our hearts can still sing after all these years.

Perhaps a heart can still sing to itself while no one – including ourselves – is looking.

But perhaps our hearts sing to each other without us knowing.

This might happen while we are both asleep,

Perhaps out hearts are laughing, joking, dancing & drinking away.

They don’t care that we – the earth strapped ego people – no longer talk or see each other.

Our hearts know we are both like children and don’t know any better,

Than to always get in the way of ourselves & always ruin ‘what might be’.

Our hearts laugh at us, knowing we are such fools –

They know we’re missing out on a hell of a party down here.

And once in a million tries, the two dancing drunk hearts will make a breakthrough.

The human beings attached hear them party,

In that half awake half asleep dreamscape,

For a brief few moments we both feel that the other one is still there.

Yes this is a glorious thing,

But as I’m a greedy bastard, I’d still to see you in the flesh again.

But I don’t know if you will ever allow it.

But why should our disembodied hearts have all the fun?

It’s a simple good argument don’t you think?

And I know I can’t do anything right now other than cajole a few words from the dictionary,

Ask for some of the best ones to fall out,

Then re-order themselves perfectly,

Just to impress you a little.

I wonder if you will one day ever read this?

And I just overheard both of our hearts talking to each other while I was drowsy,

During the party they went outside for a quiet pow-wow,

I heard one of them say this to the other, & the other one nodded in agreement:

All they need to do is clink a glass, raise a smile, make some eye contact, and say hello.

The hearts are right – It is we fools that makes ‘matters of the heart’ become unsolved mysteries.

As a surprise – let’s be wise and follow their advice.

It could happen.

“The Rosy Life Of The High IQ + Neuro-divergent” (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

If you have high IQ and Neuro-diversity you tend to live in your own world.

A world of ever-swirling-ideas, stacks of sky-high books & mindsets of never wanting to be ‘pinned down’.

And of course, at least a few decades of voluntary poverty – that goes without saying.

But let me explain the ‘pinned down’ thing.

You see people like us – who are smart & also neuro-divergent (I reckon I have ADHD) –

We love ‘Ideas’ much more than the current version of ‘bland Earthian reality’ dished up.

So this explains our tendency to not want to commit to a single-probability-wave-collapsed, long term course of action –

It is too much connected to the ‘real world’.

We would rather talk about the myriad of pitfalls that the ‘real world’ has waiting to ensnare.

When we do this with a beer or tea or coffee we are in our version of ‘heaven’.

For example I don’t like the idea of being a Lawyer with two kids in private school with a high price wife on a hill.

And then we would have dinner parties where we all sit & rattle off narrow upper-middleclass epithets to each other.

“Oh I’ve decided to rebalance my portfolio”

“Oh really – that’s wise”

“Yes I decided that while drinking bitch juice at Portsea Polo last week”

“Oh what a great Idea Ms X, and I have got my reno going – we are adding an extra room & two new bathrooms”

“Oh isn’t that wonderful Ms Y – but will Burt still pee on the toilet seats?”

Cue the laughing like Hyena’s & all in front of poor Blushing Burt.

That kind of life I would see as a ‘living hell’.

The performative narrow-band blandness of it all is stomach churning.

Why would anyone want to live like that?

When I see people like this I think it’s all because they have killed off their inner child.

They have ‘human sacrificed’ themselves.

You can’t think of them as the playful child they once were – it is impossible to divine from their adult faces.

Someone that has a high IQ & is Neuro-diverse sees these things very easily.

We see the unhappiness & the unhappiness out there in the world.

We see through the smoke & mirrors of this ‘reality tv’ world they’ve sneaked on us.

Of course we suffer – for we are usually poor – but perhaps a few might get wealthy off Art/Media/Music etc.

Those ones often can’t handle being back in the world of empty epithets, status, & bank balances – so they do themselves in.

So we are better off being alone on our rooms with books piled high & living off the food scraps the world throws up.

If we die under a ditch early in life – we can accept that.

For at least we saw the swindle and had a original few ideas.

We let the dull have their dinner parties, & we were happily uninvited.

It’s far more fun to make fun of them.

They can swig their overpriced bitch diesel & practice their sneers in their expensive cracked mirrors.

We will be writing of it all with full epistemological & philosophical accuracy for future generations to enjoy.

While they will be outed as the ‘intellectual sludge people’ of the ever-declining post-post-Roman era.

All in all I’d say us high IQ-Neuro-diverse have it pretty good.

The only draw back is we need to raid the back of the couch to buy milk,

And our rooms are book laden dusty debacle obstacle courses.

Other than that life’s Rosy for us.

The only weak point we have is when there is a sudden ‘crisis of confidence’:

Where we wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with the thought:

“Are we just a rehahsed version of them but don’t know it?”.

It is a terrible conjecture indeed.

If it were true, I would act to bury it deep in my psyche forthwith – to protect a fragile ego.

If it were not true, I’d be willing to write a poem about it.

Dragon slayed my friends – Dragon slayed!

We are not at all like them – we are not like our natural enemies.

We have not yet became that which we fight against.

But this is not the end of our problems:

For what of the next conjecture:

Are we High IQ Neuro-divergent family still just ‘bunch of assholes’ none-the-less?

I call this the ‘Griswold’s theory’ and I hope the answer is not of the ‘one hand clapping in the woods’ type.

But let’s be honest with ourselves: we can easily slip into the territory without knowing it,

So perhaps all of us can be assholes some of the time,

Some of us can be assholes all of the time,

But all of us can’t be assholes all of the time.

This is called the Dylan-asshole-theory.

Of course I could continue, however this is a poem and not an essay.

And I think we can all agree, be us High Iq Neuro-divegent’s or Upper middle class pustules or somthing else:

Only an asshole would write am essay and call it a poem.

I reader pals, would never do that.

Though I am also sometimes a unscrupulous liar.

I regard this as an inalienable right my artistic license,

Which strangely is now made to expire every five years, & limits the number of passengers I can stage dive onto.

And now this essay, er…I mean poem must end.

For more than enough intellectual chaos has been metered out,

And ‘world befuddlement stocks’ have been greatly enriched.

My work is done here.

“Poorly Written Personified Latin, Only Partially Saved” (A Poem)

by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

My name is “Et Cetera” I things like all things in the same vein or theme. 

My arch enemy is the evil “Inter Alia”, who likes to live amoungst other things that need not be mentioned. 

My neighbor “Ipso Facto” is a bore, obsessed with only dry facts leading to unarguable conclusions. 

However my delightful alter ego ‘Cognito Ergo Sum”, I cannot think better of! – a better man surely does not exist! 

The less said about “E Pluribus Unum” the better – that old flame is too obsessed with simplicity, always boiling things down. 

And finally a mixture of both good manners & schoolboy humor stops me from about “Annus Horriblis” at all.

This “stock” or “filler” Poem is worth a written apology it itself,

Which cynically can then be cut up & disseminated as seven individual “stock” “filler” poems,

I’m sorry dear reader but this is what you must put up with for the good,

For to get to the payable gold you have to shift at least a tonne of dirt.

Alas there will be no refunds at you local poetry dealer store –

The one that opens at 1pm and shuts at 3am – (standard liberal arts hours).

“A poetry store at the end of every street?

Surely this is just a ‘pipe dream’.

Sad the man who was ironically also smoking a pipe & unwittingly in the middle of a lucid dream.

I said “you are probably right, a poetry store on every corner is a pipe dream sir – I’d have to sell sewerage pipes for that”

To which the smoking lucid dreamer woke for his lucid dream & fittingly said

“Shit – where am I”

I said “you’re up caught in the middle of a shite poem that you can’t get out of”

To which the pipe smoking man looked up & said – “I agree that Latin shit up there that you wrote is totally stock, filler if you will”.

To which I replied “Don’t worry Sir, I’m belatedly putting this shite poem out of it’s misery”

To which he queried “Does this also mean I die?”

To which I replied in the affirmative.

He then said “Oh well, I had a good run”.

I promised him before brought the hammer down, that I might revive him in a future poem.

He said “ok, but next time can you write in a ‘hot mrs’ half my age?”

I said, hey hey sonny, I’m the hero of my own poetry ok – if anyone’s gettin’ that it’s me!”

Just as I hit save on the computer screen he managed to squeak out a nominal; “F you”.

I love it when characters come to life, saving a very bad poem from abject artistic obscurity.

I only hope some future critic will review it as

Poorly Written Personified Latin, Only Partially Saved