Mondo Gonzo

By Ike Knife

This collection of poems is a serious of impressions, observations and musings about both public events spanning the year 2020 and personal experiences by the author during the same time. Key subject matter includes perceptions on how to strategically address feelings of social isolation, alienation and marginalization as well as ideas on how to effectively cope with personal life hardships such as the unpleasant realities of aging, financial struggles, achieving a satisfying work-life balance and the suicide of a loved one. Our world is imperfect and troubled, but it is a pleasure and privilege to exist, and overcoming challenge is just par for the course - a fundamental aspect of the Human Condition, which every person is called to accomplish in his or her own unique way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664174658

Ike Knife

Ike Knife is a former teacher, coach, principal, and executive director. He has owned and operated his own educational consulting firm and has lived and worked abroad in both the Far and Middle East. He currently resides in the Middle East, where he continues to work in the field of public education, and is completing another advanced degree in leadership. He is married and has a son. He devotes his free time to his passions: meditation, exercise, volunteer work, and writing about spiritual and social issues in the hope that his words can serve, in some capacity, the general betterment of humankind.

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Copyright © 2021 by Ike Knife.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/21/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

823596

This book is

dedicated to Gale Wiley

(June 9, 1970 - April 28, 2020). You are gone, but not

forgotten; your memory lives on in these words.

Accepting by Reflecting

Ancient

Angels

April 28

Ashes

Binary brigands

Bird Parasite

Black Box

Bolshevit

Bulls’ blood

Chaff

Changed

Children of the Glen

Chosen

Cinnamon Creeper

Coffee Crime

Collide

Cosmic Rain

Cottonwood Calliope

Crazy

Covidiocy

Devolution Doldrums

Done

Dying twice

Eighteen Thousand

Electioneering

Electric desert

Empathy

Eugenics

Fallen Star

Fallen

Feel

Fifty

Foibles and Quibbles

Fool in a Mask

Foolin’

Forgive

Fraternal Twins

Fulcrum

Gemini

Gentle Force

Gift horse

God Pause

Gratitude

Green

Grinder

Guide inside

Harvest

Here

High Dryness

I Am

Indigo

Ingratiating

Is

Jackass Cove

Ka

Karma

La Otra Mitad

Laocoön

Legitimate

Lineage

Listen

Lyrical Mysterical

Manson

Maze

Measure

Mighty Cyrus

Minstrel Mantras

Mondo Gonzo

Moon mind

Murder Money

Mythos

Not

Olden

One

Pause

Peace

Permutations

Prisons

Program

Q trip

Querida

Querida (English translation)

Rays

Reparation

Republica

Right

Rocks

Ruse

Same

Sanctuary

Savage Ravager

Say

Seasons

Sky fire

Soldier Gone

Stand

States

Sue’s Side

Sun Sets

Sunday Serenade

Sychophant

Ten

The Worrier

This

Tick

Too

Trump Card

Truth

Twenty, Twenty

Unbound

Unchartered Waters

Unicorn

Uncertainty

Until I Die

Until

Valhalla’s Verve

Volunteers

Water

Ways

West

Witizen

Wolfram Alpha

Write

WT Fever

X-Ray Eyes

X.T.D.

Y

Young

Zealot

Zie End

Accepting%20by%20Reflecting.jpg

Accepting by Reflecting

Living like a pauper

All my life been poor

I’ve never shirked a task

I’ve finished every chore

Grinding like a slave child

Always wanting more

Sailing toward a dream land

We never reach that shore

One and one is two

And two and two is four

Counting all the dollars

We settle up the score

Life is for the living

But life is like a war

We struggle and we fight

Through carnage and through gore

Every day I’m tired

My body feels so sore

I’m aged and decrepit

From burdens that I bore

My days are filled with pain

I feel it in my core

My heart was shattered pieces

In half, in two, it tore

Searching for an answer

Wondering what for

Seeking out the wisdom

In tales of yonder lore

Gamble if you want to

Losing’s either or

Wasting all your moments

Luck is neither nor

So this is where I leave you

Closing up the store

My life it was my lesson

I knock on Heaven’s door

The other side is calling

I’ve fallen to the floor

Accepting by reflecting

Now I breathe no more

Ancient.jpg

Ancient

The passing of the ages

The wisdom of the sages

The kingdoms of the legends

Beside an ancient lake

Infinite plasticity

Colliding with tauroctony

Tepid trepidation

Ground up in hamlet’s mill

Mystic meditation

Calculate precession

Sidereal surrealism

Leonine summer glen

Thuban and Polaris

Aldebaran, Rigel

Obliquity ecliptic

Platonic years long gone

The peoples of the desert

Once were water dwellers

The rivers of Sahara

Dried up and lost in time

Seeking the eternal

Rotating and diurnal

Opiate of the masses

Stars will rise and fall

Semantic hypostasis

Tattooed upon their faces

Inverted deification

Explained in old Avestan

The time, it hasn’t come

To learn where you are from

Reveal the vernal deep

Archetypal orb of sleep

Reframing of a structure

Like blood is to a puncture

How can one make sense?

Of cognitive dissonance

Angels

Where are the angels?

Up in heaven

Before we came down

We made our handshake agreement

To do things for, and to, each other

In order to teach one another

The lessons we needed to learn

To fulfill our purpose

Of growing the self-understanding

Of the Collective Oversoul

To which we are conjoined

And an equal part of

Our true, fundamental nature

Which we have not realized yet

And need this incarnation’s lessons

To move us closer to understanding

Angels we were then

And so shall be again

Once we accomplish our mission here

And take our leave of this conundrum

Those whose anxious anguish

At times seem overwhelming

Cry out in quiet agony

Without ever saying a word

Are asking that most basic of questions

Where are the angels?

So that they can remind themselves

That everything is going to be alright

Because there’s comfort is the knowing

That the angels are all right here

Cavorting about every place we go

Frolicking around in their hydro carbon vesicles

Giggling and playing their roles

Masquerading as ordinary humans

But in reality

They

And we

Are all

Angels

Enjoying a crazy costume party

Otherwise known as life

Until it’s our time to depart

And return home

To join the other angels

Who left the party before us

But only because

Their spiritual work was done

April 28

Arriving late

Transition’s gate

The ides of March

Was 28

28 April

Should have been spring

Instead was the day

She lost everything

Why did she lose?

Why all her pain?

What was she hoping?

Or seeking to gain?

Cut off from others

Dysfunctional funk

Robbed her of hunger

And all out of spunk

Spiraling nowhere

Out of control

Persecute choices

We never will know

The hurt that she carried

Her bag full of pain

The angst deep within her

Until she was slain

Self-martyred victim

Lay dead on the ground

Her voice is now silenced

She can’t make a sound

It’s sad and it’s tragic

Although her own choice

Believe in the magic

She still has a voice

The writer within her

Had stories to tell

‘Bout glories of heaven

And sorrows of hell

I carry her spirit

With me in my heart

Together we’re better

Although we’re apart

Words have a power

When planted, they grow

I write about feeling

So that they can know

Enigmas of being

That few can express

Mysterious seeing

I’m called to profess

Clear up the murky

Clean out the mud

Honestly speaking

Of flesh and of blood

We carry on living

And this is a fact

Put up defenses

In case we’re attacked

Remember the fallen

All those who have gone

Before us, restore us

So we can march on

I lost a life mate

By the hand of fate

The day she died

Was April 28

Ashes.jpg

Ashes

Ashes to Ashes

Dust to dust

Living is learning

Resting is rust

All of the times that

You cried and you fussed

We do what we have to

We do what we must

Mining for silver

Is boom and it’s bust

The almighty dollar

Says in God we trust

Mad people vamping

Satiate lust

Spending their money

Savings get flushed

Years pile on while

Mem’ries get crushed

Some things are hidden

And secrets stay hushed

Binary%20Brigands.jpg

Binary brigands

We’re binary brigands

Enslaved by our sin