Unlock the Poems...

  

[this is in progress]

...of Phorkyad Acropolis' The Future's Passed
Herein lie explanations for some of the poems in my collection, The Future's Passed. While most (if not all) of the poems and songs can stand on their own, I find it sometimes interesting to see the background on how a particular piece came about. (That is not always pretty, as in the case of "A Mirror.")
Some of these poems can be heard on my compilation CD entitled Songs from The St. Vitus School of Dance.
My Muse
 They inspire us, and take on many forms.
Inkwell Ditty

A very simple piece from the late 1970s. My English Comp 2 instructor was commenting on a student's handwriting and said, "It's like you dipped an ant into an inkwell." I went on from there.
Big Chuck and The Watchdog
 This poem is also from the late 1970s. These were the nicknames of two real people, and some of the costuming details are correct. You may also find it odd to know that a girlfriend threw me over for one of them, and then my next girlfriend actually took up with me because the other turned out to be too old for her. I exacted my revenge on both of them by killing them fictionally. The second girlfriend went on to inspire "On The Skids" (see below).
On A Rampage

This comes from the early 1980s. A convenience store in Columbus, OH was nicknamed the Stop and Rob, so that helps place the date. I had no intention of doing any of this; I was just exploring a thought. Unfortunately, people do continue to do this regularly.
My CyberLover
 This is most likely from the mid-1990s. At one point I discovered webchat, and then found a lot of desperate and lonely people looking to connect to other human beings in whatever ways they could. Imagination fueled a lot of those encounters, and for some reason people--very willing to talk about things--often talked about them with me. Hence, this song.
I Saw the Face of Jesus
(In the Icecubes of My Drink)
 Maybe it was reading about subliminal advertising, or people seeing the face of Mary in tree bark or toast. So I wrote this. Jeremy dePrisco eventually did the musical version (for mp3 and RealAudio.
Soul Screams
 Another imagination-fueled exploration of an idea. I imagined someone cutting a person out of their pictures, and continuing to cut.... Asa GarageBand piece, I tried to play with the notion of an audio "scream" produced by the keyboard and synthesized instruments.
Make It True
 This is from the mid-1980s, and was written for Dianna L. Bourke. Sean Timmons (whom I had met at Appel Farm Arts & Music Camp) wrote music for it, and he and Cathy Birk sang it at our wedding. I still have scratchy sounding recordings on cassette tapes...somewhere....
Soar to Me
 I had a very prolific time of writing in the year 2006. At some point I realized I was coming back into contact with people I had known in past lives, and the whole thing convinced me that everything DOES happen for a reason.
A Mirror
 In some motel rooms, they put the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, so that if you close the door and sit on the toilet, you are confronted by--yourself, staring at you. Couple that with exhaustion from driving and "the classic thinking posture," and you have this.
Almost Passing
 More parts of my my prolific writing period in 2006.
When In My Arms
Emergency Exit
 A metaphor drawn from a real conversation. I am usually not one to take the Emergency Exit out of situations, and explored the idea with this piece.
As Is
 I found myself on this creative kick where I would think of poetic phrases, and have nothing to write them down with, so I would end up calling my voicemail or answering machine and leaving brief staccato phrases. These I would then turn into short poems. Both "As Is" and "The Stall (2)" come from this "technique."
The Stall (2)
Spy A Robin
 This one was inspired by a robin sitting in a snow-covered tree outside a nursing home. (Go figure. Sometimes my metaphors aren't really metaphors.) I was trying to capture the emotions in dealing with trying to find a place for my mother closer to me.
Squirrels
 Thy frustrate me by eating the food I put out for the birds. And then I had to tak a second look at them when Jeremy dePrisco entitled his 2007 CD Catch the Squirrel.
Heal
Happiness Defined
 The second is a haiku version of the first, submitted to a Second Life poetry contest.
That Word
 I was attending the Neo-soul Poetry Jam of Cruiz Control in Second Life when Vavavooooom Vandeverre read a poem, "Nigga." I then decided to respond with my own reflection on the power we give the word.
Dancing With My Stalker
 The previously mentioned Vavavooooom once IMed me and asked, "So who is your SL stalker?" asserting that everyone has one. I told her I thought it was her. And then I began playing with the idea of internet stalking, along with a chance to laugh at myspace and its ability to not allow stalking, but to make it easy!
There Be Dragons

This epic poem came from two inspirations. The first was someone's epic poem "read" at a poetry night in Second Life. To make it shorter, the author put the four lines of each verse together so he wouldn't have to copy and paste so much. But it went on interminably anyway, which epic poems have a tendency to do.

The a Second Life friend of mine, who has her own dragon avatar, but mostly appears in normal clothing, or sometimes in fantasy role-playing garb, said she was being IMed by a dragon. (Her SL stalker, I would guess.) He appeared drunk from his typing and typos, and kept trying to teleport her too where she was. When she finally agreed, she arrived in a place where several dragons were trying to have a an orgy with several naked human females. She didn't stay, but did relate this event to me, which I versified.
Internet Women
 Another exploration of the "Who are you, really?" syndrome on the World Wide Web. I once asserted that people tend to believe you are who you say you are, judging from my own experiments in this area. Add to that getting a series of emails from Svetlana who fell in love with me from my photo on Yahoo (which, no, I don't have) and a variety of other solicitous solicitations, and we have all the makings of this song.
On the Skids
 For years, I said about my first real girlfriend in college, "If I had married her, I'd be in prison today. Because I would have killed her." I always thought that might make an amusing song lyric. So, with GarageBand, I finally wrote the song. And on the CD, I sing it. Check it out.