Kevin Trent Boswell

A Ridiculous Thing

Don’t worry, you will love no part of it;
It’s certain to please, someone, somewhere

Possibly and definitely, maybe
No one who isn’t everyone, but is

Enter the theater of the absurd

And words… did I mention…
There is words; there are many word

A poem, a bit of a slight,
A sleight of hand, poetic
Stream-of-consciousness to commence
Leaning into the background
A handy little bit of conscience, handed
Down onto the foreground and landed
And not the slightest bit of it
Made any sense,
Not one single mode or section

Reason completely escaping detection
And hence,
Thoroughly not the throughout…
It’s good
And it’s okay if you realize that it isn’t
Okay to be good at detecting
That it is, but only when you know
That it might be

Peek behind the floor
There’s nothing under the door
And someone is beside the rug,
Shrugging at the sound of the wall
And laughing at all the empty windows

We might have just enough time
To do everything
With the rest of the nothing

No one needs an excuse to be a poem

A poem is an utterly meaningless,
Ridiculous thing,
And everyone has
Every bit as much right
To be one
As I do

A Name and Little Else

A catalyst, dipped in fire, a belch
Memories serve as a match
Begging forgiveness, promising again;
The disease is certain to catch

On further reflection, please do not
Pretty please, say that you can’t
The idea of slightest, greatest, or middle
Causes a rage and a rant

It’s simply too much, and too little, by far
And none of it’s worth all the troub…
I can’t even begin, much less finish,
With an every-time-wrong-way rub

Let someone else have it; I do mean all
If it’s like that, the price is too steep
The smart is too short, the stink too wide,
And the stupid is just too deep

It thinks too little, too much, of itself
A fickle, passing wind, a decree
It tilts on stilts, and then, suddenly wilts
At nothing and all that you see

Throttle the speed, and down the shifter,
Or the shafter, or the hole, or whatever
Turn it away, and all that it offers,
Which is little and even less clever

For days are short hours; hours, too long
Months wasted on the beginning
But cutting it short and calling it quits,
One is afforded more winning

Then, years all stretch comfortably out,
All the tired heads nod to agree
The minutes are sweeter; decades, too
And everything is as it should be

The poetry of Kevin Trent Boswell — **Oops, I dropped the picture.**

locus

weighted dice spilling from broken jaws

tainted allegories and
flawless renderings of the invisible

dry beans pour out of sacks
onto tables of diamond and ivory

an abacus of emeralds,
strung on strands of horsehair

a tiny pewter coin sits
atop a scale of solid silver
resting on a column of solid gold

pristine smudges of chocolate
on acrylic peanut butter tapestries

buckets full of comets kicked over
and showers of sparks
falling on the floor

it’s enough to fill
the silos of the universe
top to bottom

but is it enough?

each individual grain of sand
grates against another;
all are dutifully counted

the hourglass is emptied
of all its inexorable empires

excuses are forged from breath,
and hammered into the sacred elixir
of nothingness

there is no motion
in this river’s torrent

the asphalt streets stole it all,
sold it to capricious eels
who swim in desperate candlelight

germinating helixes
bristling thorn vines

funneling promising poisons
into the infant mouths
of ageless behemoths
who rule small places

culmination is the beginning
of the termination of endings
and the siphoning off
of all the intermittent middle bits,
the ones that,
as an afterthought,
we tacked onto the ends
in carefully coordinated haste

the endeavor,
doomed from the outset

thank goodness
we never embarked upon the journey
and that we saw it through
all the way to the end

we can scarcely contain ourselves
from raving about
what raucous ecstatic bliss
it was, from the pistol start
to the razored end

steal the serpent’s fangs

replace its venom
with politesse
and useless smalltalk

watch giddily
as it pathetically
gnaws and gums
unproductively at its prey

we dare not speak
of our elusive mysteries,
not to the droll, sour, uninitiated brood,
lest they discover our secret formula
of beginning in the middle
and ending at the front part
of the second third half
of each hind quarter,
but only on Thursdays,
except on leap years of an august May

the excitement would surely
be too much for their frail constitutions,
and over dead, they would drop down,
into new incarnations
of ceaseless wonder

and when, if so,
would any of it
ever cease?

take care,
that none of this ever occurs,
except for those precious few times
that it unavoidably does not

dial back
the wilting clock
and try not to
try again

The music and poetry of Kevin Trent Boswell.jpg

I See You

To my friends
Who strive to be
Better than you were
Yesterday

I want you to know that
I see you

And I appreciate you

At times, I have been wrong;
Many, many, many times,
I have been
Wrong

On a few occasions, I have been the bad guy

Out of fear, I did things I wasn’t proud of;
Things I’m deeply ashamed of,
Things I hold myself accountable for,
So I don’t do them again

Sometimes, out of frustration,
I was lazy, apathetic, etc.

But I haven’t allowed myself to stay stuck,
Mired in those states indefinitely

I have not been a troll,
Picking fights for the sake of fighting

I ask myself, “Which part of my beliefs
“Are based on shoddy thinking?”

I ask myself, “In what ways have I been
“Less than kind, greedy, or negative?”

And many of you
Have been the inspirations
For my wanting to be
Better than I was

Even when I failed,
Your examples still served
As valuable anchor points
For me to get up and
Try again

I have kept a mental list
Of my friends and acquaintances
Who strive to be
Simultaneously
Excellent and kind

I want you to know that
I see you

And I appreciate you

I know you do your best
To hear both sides
Of important discussions

I know you read books and articles

I know you seek information that is
Outside of your usual echo chambers
To help you be well-informed and
As unbiased as possible

I know you become discouraged,
The same way I do,
When you see the stupid things
That people post, say, and defend

Things so easy to disprove
It’s ridiculous,
And yet, they stick to their beliefs
Like glue

I know you, too,
Throw up in your mouth a little
When people display
An unshakeable belief of,
“My feelings are just as valid as your facts.”

Feelings are a thing
They have many of,
And most of them are
Completely out of proportion
With the reality of the various situations

And facts are things that
They only have a scant few of

I know that many of you have
A vast education under your belts

Some of you are writers or educators
Some of you are scientists or musicians
Some of you are entrepreneurs
Some of you are esotericists
Or mathematicians
Or you are in mental health

Or you work in any of
Dozens of other areas that all require
Brains, determination, and a
Delicate balance of empathy and
Fearlessness

Whatever you do, I take note of how
You have an excellent understanding
Regarding your particular fields of study

Some of you have a Bachelor’s degree;
Others have a Master’s or Doctorate;
Some only have an Associate’s;
Some of you barely finished high school,
Or you got a GED,
Or you dropped out

But even those who dropped out
Have more of a
School of Hard Knocks education
Than some who have Master’s degrees

What you all have in common is that
You don’t hide behind
Your credentials

You mention them only when
It’s essential to do so

You didn’t stop learning

At no point did you decide that
You had “arrived,” or that you
Could no longer learn something
From someone half your age

At no time did you conclude that you are
Wiser, more intelligent, or more righteous
Than anyone else

Because
You aren’t competing
With anyone else;
Only with yourself

I see that quality in you

And I humbly bow
To that aspect
Of your nature

I see most people barking at each other
From places of fear, bitter hatred,
Ignorance that refuses to be corrected,
And from places of privilege;
People who cannot or will not
Show compassion for those
Who did not have the same advantages

And then, I see YOU

And the difference between
You and them is like
Night and day

You quietly go about your lives
Being friendly, but
Standing up for yourselves
And for others

More importantly,
You do it without any pretentiousness,
No “holier than thou” attitude

And I gotta say,

You fuckin’ rock.

I see you apologize
When you were rude,
Without habitually
Repeating the offense

I see you admitting when
You didn’t know something,
And graciously thanking someone for
Politely educating you about it

I also quietly assign you cool points
When some vulgar troll tries to
Rudely school you
Or assassinate your character
And you smack them down,
Put them in their place,
Without stooping
To their level

Some of you do this by
Sticking to the facts,
Some of you just block them,
And some of you utilize your
Wicked, rapier wit to
Eviscerate them

And I smile

And yes, there are many things that
I’m incorrect about,
And many of you are
Much more knowledgeable
In these areas than I am

And there are a few things
That I know more about
Than you do

But we
Give each other
Respect

Because
We both know in our hearts that
Each of us

Is sincerely trying
Much harder to

BE RIGHT

Than to merely

Appear right

I appreciate the times when you
Are patient with my stupidities,
Of which I have many

I appreciate the times
When you could have
Decimated me in an argument
Because I didn’t know
What the hell I was talking about

But you didn’t ridicule me,
You just pulled me aside and
Politely shared some
Of your wisdom with me

I see the “average” people
Who are genuinely well below
What average used to be

And they want to be rewarded
For their mediocrity

Then, I see YOU

Sharing your excellence,
Your experience, your humor,
Your charm, your skill, and your kindness

And you ask nothing
In return

I see you

And you

Keep me

Going

stain

In loving memory of Jevon Ward

he was speaking vodka,
a language that I understood
all-too-well

as I sat on the edge of his bed,
I handed him the joint
that I had just finished
carefully rolling

he lit it, and taking a small toke,
became suddenly
and uncharacteristically
serious

“You do know that I’m not life, right?”

it must have been obvious
that I had no clue
how to answer that,
so he continued,

“When I was just a little boy,
“your grandpa (and mine) told me,
“he said,

‘Son, you’ll pull time before you hit twenty.’

“At nineteen, I did six months.”

before he could say another word,
drunk people spilled into the room
and the party took over

it was as if the writer
of this dark comedy of errors
had carefully placed
the interruption into the script
for dramatic effect

years later,
I stood in the yard
with my father
one morning

we burned a mattress
in the yard

a mattress with
a peculiar red stain
on the top end of it,
right about where a man
would lay his head down
to sleep

smoke climbed high,
snaking its way through
the bare tree branches,
coating the limbs,
blackening the sun,
giving twisted new meaning
to the wind

with each searing crackle,
each hot little iron
that launched out of the flames,
the notion was solidified
that you would never be
with us again

the red stain
is forever removed,
taken off and away
from the bad blend of cotton
and synthetic fiber

its ugly lack of aesthetic,
permanently removed
from the eye

we have, instead,
embroidered you
into our hearts,
in gold-letter
on satin

a little redirection,
a simple trick
of the firelight
and the mind

a touch of
pre-approved manipulation,
vocabulary and memory,
now twisted
to suit ourselves
with semblances
of sanity

and you, all dressed up,
looking dapper
in a new suit

something to
bring you over
the threshold
in style

we have gathered
many flowers

you were one of them

now, on this rainy Saturday,
we gather more,
but none of them are as rare
or as interesting as you

still, we do so wish
that you were not so

still

now, we are all
so much more careful
with our words

we never had to
monitor our tongues before

we always counted on you
to say something
deliciously profane,
hysterical, sublime

you said things far more terrible
than we could ever manage
(or dare) to bring forth
from our fearful mouths

you said it all for us,
you, being our favorite devil,
you spared no words,
knowing full well that your time
was short

now, everything is
serious and sullen

ash settles on us,
stealing the still-warm
seat of smiles

we do our best
to preserve the integrity
of your memory

with all our words,
so clumsily polite and wrong

yours were so horribly accurate

your list of faults could fill volumes

all of these,
now consumed by fire
and forgetfulness

we will not miss them

we are, in fact, glad
to be free of these;
free from the weight
of your awful acuity

your spiteful condemnation
of this earth was always felt
hot upon our necks

even your parting words of
“Fuck this world!”
were a vicious pronouncement
of a pox on all our houses

that seething sentiment,
ever-present,
laced into the mix
of the cocktail that was you;
virtually indistinguishable
from the indiscriminate joy
of your cosmic jester voice
pouring out over our
wanting brains

we will not miss the
chaos of your actions,
or your allegiance to
an autocratic indifference

we only miss

everything else

but beneath all of the
intolerable heavy,

knowing of nothing else to do…

we dutifully
lift our eyes
to the coming days
where you
are not