Math Made Easy By Ducks(for my dear niece when she was 7 yrs. old)

A family of affectionate ducks absconds,
Two by two the younger ducks dash to the pond,
No sooner than a splash upon a feather one drowns,
Mother Goose looks frantically for little ducky unfound, 
The twin little ducky says, "mother he drowned!"
"Oh no, not my baby," she said with a quack-less frown,
"He's a duck, how possibly could he have drowned?"
"Easily," said the twin little ducky, "with buckshot from old man Brown!"


- John Hardesty  

Sleepless Star

Long ere creation was spun
The stars shone in the heavens,
For a billion years they have burned
To musing eyes
Who stares at the spectrum?

A saltant star flickers into the night
Silently ululating for its space,
Glinting, the candent powerful light
Although a million miles away
The glare’s so brilliantly bright.

The ebbing of its glow
Skirring past the shadowy night;
Mystifying the dwarf eyes below
Where wishes are made upon
As the dying star enters time's black hole.

- John Hardesty 

The Bull

The beast stands with fortitude and amassed with muscled armor,
He snorts and breathes intimidation,
For he keeps a safe distance from the farmer,
In fear of being a ball-less consternation. 


 - John Hardesty 

Beyond The Last Escape

Many hoary decades have passed since that dark hallowed night,
'Twas an evening when the rook wed an unwelcomed flight;
Every eve of that pernicious night comes this transcendental wind,
Sending an intrapsychic message from earth's infinite spin;
This praxis is well known by all necromancers: séance,
Communing with the spirit's dangerous liaison;
Renaissance of the greatest escape artist suddenly reappears, 
Possibly a hidden code or clue hides behind the missing years,
Depths of mystery, and passion unknown and uncharted,
Communication between the living and the departed;
We have called him, Lord of Handcuffs, and Monarch of Leg Shackles,
And indisputably, The King of Chains and Manacles;
Defying his destined fate with acts of bondage and insecurity,  
Creating a barrier of conflicting mental disturbance and obscurity, 
Eventually, he became the greatest escapologist ever to be,
This rarity was none other than Harry Houdini. 


- John Hardesty 

Immortelle

Give a plant water, the plant smiles,
Give the plant sunshine, the plant speaks,
Give the plant food, the plant thrives,
Give the plant a pot, the plant dies in the window sill. 

- John Hardesty 

The Note

This will be my last hymn
To an unaddressed notice
No instructions, no valid ticket
Empty answers, swordless buttress
Hallow induction, worthless gimmick
An unsolved mystery upon the realm.


- John Hardesty 

The Tree In The Meadow

The great oak stands magnificently alone in  
the meadow, far from the nexus forest. Seasons 
have passed for the secular oak as decades  have
flourished into several centuries, year after year
the unkind and bitterly cold winters greet the
oak as its only friend, standing alone, where 
nary a beast cometh to perch upon its solitary 
boney limbs that stretch to the vast heavenly
sky.
            The last leaf falls effortlessly
            into the wind leaving behind 
            one final tainted memory of
            summer's past.

Each leaf signifying a moment that expired
grief. One bone-chilling December morn, a
farmer with his gelded ax dissevers the great 
oak tree of its loneliness. 


- John Hardesty  

Thanatos II

The hollow despaired heart
loses the joy to give,
a blacken twinge imparts
exhausts the will to live.

A suicide note written in ink,
the gunshot wound to the head,
a young woman weeps
as her lover lies dead.

High above a high-storied building
a soul finds the conviction of pain,
an entrance to an ending
of something that can't remain.

A woman drives into, then closes the garage, 
leaving the engine running,
her lustful affair with death's barrage
is a cry far from cunning. 

The spirit of a teenage kid
takes to the drugged-up street,
there he shoots-up his final bid,
whilst his family succumbs to defeat.

The death wish of many
man will never know why
and the answers if any
he chooses to die.


- John Hardesty 

Memory Seizure

God's infinite task,
overwhelms the immoderate mortal,
where he keeps our memories that have passed
when they are buried in that forgotten portal,
His omniscient and gathering grace
to restore and retrieve
those memorial treasures in that forlorn place,
to return them to us, His most gentle reprieve. 

- John Hardesty 

In One Year

In just one year, the earth revolves around the sun,
glaring past the seasons like some flaming meteor; 

In just one year, you're born under Gemini's sign,
nourished and loved, warmth from cuddled arms;

In just one year, you grow to walk and talk,
logorrhea spewing from a wobbled frame;

In just one year, sent to school,
to elicit thought and reason;

In just one year, discerning deterrents,
askew the parochial view;

In just one year, the boy becomes a man,
sent off to war, to encroach upon ideology; 

In just one year, comes back a hero,
exultant in the highest honor;

In just one year, marries his sweetheart,
the precursor of an unending cycle;

In just one year, becomes the President,
the stalwart of appeasing change;

In just one year, rose a nation
to its highest egalitarian mountain;

In just one year, that was all gone,
when "they" shot John F. Kennedy. 

- John Hardesty 

Carnival Of Cravens

They wrangle over trite affairs 
while doing so deflect their thievery,
they sit with the absurd at the Royal House;
sneering at their paupers and powerless-
scarless impunity scathes their egos
and their bursar of peace is a golden war hawk
aimed at the world,
they divide the tide of indifference
and separate the classes
with their neology;
they rewrite the codex of law
to appertain an embellishment
that staggers the covenant of justice,
they're mutes on a silver podium
who are plugged-in for personal gain and seizure,
for they have no intention for helping anyone but
their own avarice;
their speech, mockery of monkeys,
their superlatives are confounded lies,
and their singing analogies
are nothing but abject altiloquence,
they have stolen our Democracy
as we sit idly and let them
wave the American flag
that symbolizes our enslavement,
this is my Declaration of Revolution.  


- John Hardesty 

Reliquary

The feign Camelot strides his golden calf
his thralldom spread like plagues of death;
toothless and mindless his servants for whom
trawl in their viridity,
spellbound in perfidious naivety
they gather gold to glut their king,
imbecilic to their own tribunal demise;
where idiots rush in kings send in a knight-errant
to pillage from those less fortunate
and call it Democracy. 

- John Hardesty  

Age Of Primitive Principle

Beyond the antediluvian passage
and past the great flood of scoff
borne the creation of man, with him
came trinkets of delusions that spread
throughout the ages like elicit cacodoxy; 
since acquiring the age of reason man
has manipulated, plotted, and conceived 
ideas to kill his brother on charges of
indifference, creed, or race;
he loathes prosperity of another,
he despises warmth upon another,
he learns to kill easier than living, for
man is a primordial animal of death,
his savagery supersede his ingenuity
and yet, he kills instinctively without
remorse for his actions, or any consequence
of his inhumanity, for his logic leapt
from an ape to a godless monster. 


-  John Hardesty 

Faith Versus Truth

                                    Faith's no more than 
                                    some pillowing detour
                                    from the looming
                                    reality of death. 


                                         - John Hardesty 

Love From A Cage

Bound and gagged like some trapped animal,
sedated, declawed, and tortured I sit
beside her menagerie of whims;
I can't escape her poisoned orbit
for her gravity pulls like Jupiter's eye
that tugs away the last pulse from my 
aching heart and suffocates the final reason
from my clutching throat, and answer thyself,
why can't I leave this misery worse than all
deaths, for angels, dwell in this 'sombre ghetto'
of my mind with little regard for passion, 
or lasting apologies, there I shall die alone
until the phone rings again. 

- John Hardesty 

The Thin Line

There, in the faintness of wonder lies
the macrocosm of sophistication 
where profound meets divinity and
where the microcosm of naivete 
wallows in an abject scheme
that undermine one's absurdity 
to reassure the epic strangulation
from this life in a harmonized fusion 
into the next world of fatalism; 
to defect in a consciousness of
becoming immortal and to
match this impermeable God
for whom is flawless and domineering;
yet, the inexactitude and indulgence 
of opulent fancies and inept whims
only attests to the indomitable 
weakness of mortals, who'll
never rise like the great Phoenix
because man is deceived by 
his own inequitable ignorance 
of being a God beyond being
an ineffective and incompetent
ungulate.  

God Within A God

In the grand picture of creation
where imperceptible credit and
inconsequential proof that one God
undeniably and without inconclusive
evidence created everything in
our world and universe is beyond our
comprehension and inconceivable 
arrogance is one stretch for any
imagination; alas, the trenchant
of cynical thought always conflicts
with the immoral rush of faith, where
good and bad corrupt the tenable
forces of resolution;
so God made man in the likeness of
Himself, and every human that
ravished, slaughtered and murdered
another was this monster called GOD. 


-  John Hardesty 

Paradox Of Life

Be mindful of the warmth of youth,
Keep an oculus dexter on the flock,
Be thoughtless to the shudder of death,
Yet, keep an oculus sinister on the clock.

Where is the truth that you seek?
For errs of man holds this constant residence,
Beset by royal class and lesser pedigree,
Gold for one, and famine the other's pestilence.

The answers that you shall find,
Will never be found in some ancient vilified book,
Nor, the riddles of life be unraveled,
By some ghost and shepherd's hook.

Open your heart to the gift
Bestowed upon mankind,
For every creature alike
Belong to the Universe's master design. 


- John Hardesty 

All Despair Who Enter This Place

                    We are carried into this world by lovely angels and
                    tormented by living demons from then on,
                    they seek you out in destitution and resistance is futile,
                    though you may find many comforts the only
                    residence you'll ever dwell is through the harrowing storm
                    with heavenly gods, but the stroke of reality pelts you 
                    down to the ground, there amongst the viable mortals
                    who deem you as some subversive monster;
                    your shoulders carry the burden of guilt,
                    and your mind wilts in shame, dying, 
                    your blossomed dreams are but nightmarish tragedies, 
                    you can no longer fly away to this blissful glade,
                    your anchor's a wooden cross, chained to your soul,
                    to remind you life's a wicked joke paid in full by
                    the loneliest fool. 

                                   by John Hardesty 

My Irreplaceable Dog

                                  I brought him home and he was no bigger than my palm,
                                  he was the runt, but the first in the litter who came to me,
                                  Dad always told me to grab the runt in the litter because
                                  they're the healthiest, smartest, and cutest, and damn if
                                  dad wasn't right, of all in that litter my Archie is the only
                                  dog living, and he's going on 11 years, and healthy as small
                                  horse, yet, the harsh anguish and imparting rush of anxiety
                                  always addresses that he's mortal like me, and I'll never cope
                                  with his death to come, he's a silent killer, always making me
                                  laugh without blurting one word, or sigh, he's always in a great
                                  mood, ready to go for a ride, on the words, "let's go bye-bye,"
                                  he hangs his little head out the window, while propping his little
                                  left paw on the door pad, and the other on my left leg, and he's
                                  happy and content to watch the cars go slowly by, and I wonder
                                  what is he thinking, or does he even care? He's my boy, that's for
                                  damn sure, no other dog has brought me so much joy, so much fun
                                  as ole Arch, he's very smart, and attuned to my emotions as well,
                                  when I'm sad, he goes underneath my armpits and licks me from
                                  an acute angle that only trained acrobats could maneuver, he sleeps
                                  when I do, and will arise at 3:00 A.M. if I get up and grab a moment
                                  or two on the computer, then snoring away right beside me, he's a
                                  gentle dog, loving dog, and my only hero. - John Hardesty
                                 

Pawns Against A King

                                        

              Though I traipse in the transient sunlight
              an espy away from tragedy, the bite of pallor
              still tinge with resentment, 
              money, the puerile joke of all kings, 
              servitude, the solemn travesty of all slaves;
              the bending bond that separates the classes
              is but one cauldron away from revolution,
              no living human being is an elitist over another,
              alas, ingested pogroms, mass genocide, and 
              religious proclamations upon the meek, 
              tailored and tempered to enslave the powerless
              forever, America is dying from the hands of the 
              greedy, Oligarchy will never sustain their hold
              upon an armed nation, this golden cow called
              a president is one deal away from revolution, 
              America will never allow Russia to dictate our
              Freedom, never, we'll burn it all down to the
              ground before some tyrant rules our Land of 
              Free. 
                                 - John Hardesty
              

They Live Among Us

                                           

                       Ancient Rome, have their feral cats, 
                       Key West, have their clucking cocks,
                       New York, has their infested fearless rats,
                       Chesapeake Bay, has their horseshoe crab lochs.  

                       Capistrano, have their returning hallow swallows,
                       Louisville, has their champion thoroughbreds,
                       Alaska, have their salmon returning to the shallows,
                       O Hinckley(Ohio), have their buzzards returning from the dead. 


                                  - John Hardesty

An Engram Of Blackness

                                             

                                               Firm in my stance,
                                               vintage in thought,
                                               secured in flesh and bones,
                                               never swaying to influence, 
                                               stationed and bound to my beliefs, 
                                               my loyalty bows to no one save my noble faith,
                                               my significance bears no alarm for a lost crusade,
                                               I am staunch in my creed;
                                               the church stands petrified with tenets of salvation, 
                                               Holy Water, Holy Cross, Holy Idol, Holy Irresolution, 
                                               grips my agnostic eternal thought,
                                               stigmata pierce my judicious trust,
                                               in becoming an immortal God,
                                               from this powerless skeleton of custody,
                                               by desperate thought,
                                               desertion of any resurrection, 
                                               is playing with religious self-delusion,
                                               feigned hope, and nothing more.

                                                       - John Hardesty 

Ananias

                                                       


                                    The custom of truth valued by all,
                                    Lies are lies, great or small,
                                    Where tongue spew in contort,
                                    An angel vengefully hears distantly amort;
                                    Words are weapons and liars use them well, 
                                    Spirits are broken, undo harmful corporeal, 
                                    The cuckold lies of deceit, 
                                    Where lies collapse in faithless defeat,
                                    The certitude of justification
                                    Holds no conscience of explanation;
                                    The custom of truth valued by all,
                                    Lies are lies, great or small. 



                                                    - John Hardesty 

An Existential Sigh

                                            

                          The freethinker peddles his thoughts
                          of conflicting matters and disillusioned distinctions
                          eventually, confronts endogenous distraught.

                          A fallen shattered priceless vase
                          that was once a terrestrial object
                          now, ceases its optical place. 

                          The agnostic dark side
                          with its apathetic smile
                          that bereaves upon a snide.

                          The crimson Pietist and the ashen Infidel
                          both with dissenting credence
                          above an attentive sentinel. 

                          The only real numbers ascribed
                          are the timed honor cemeteries 
                          and the dates for whom they have vied.

                          For who and what we are
                          is no more thought of
                          than a bovine entering an abattoir. 

                              - John Hardesty 

                          

The Dark No One Sees

                                         

                      A dog's wagging tail betrays his vicious bark,
                      A bird attunes her matins whilst her aphonic mate sits in silence,
                      A lizard warms the day while tonguing an extinct insect,
                      Ants laboriously gather food they'll never feast upon,
                      Drone bees search for nectar whilst the queen is raptured,
                      A cat sleeps from sinning,
                      Goldfish circle the world in a wee glass globe,
                      Mice scavenge crumbs from a blind miser's hands,
                      An elephant blares his trumpet knowing there's no other equal. 

                                  - John Hardesty 

God's Own Genocide

                                             

                                    In the grand picture of creation 
                                    where imperceptible credit and
                                    inconsequential proof that one God
                                    undeniably and without inclusive 
                                    evidence created everything in our 
                                    little world and universe is beyond
                                    our comprehension and inconceivable 
                                    arrogance is one stretch for any imagination;
                                    alas, the trenchant of cynical thought always 
                                    conflicts with the immoral rush of faith, where
                                    good and evil corrupt the tenable forces of
                                    resolution; so, God made man in the likeness of 
                                    Himself and thus, every human that ravished,
                                    slaughtered, and murdered another was this 
                                    monster called God. 


                                                - John Hardesty 

Secta Of Sheep

                                                   

                                      The elite geld the strong, they
                                      promise the weak gingerbread dreams
                                      as they steal the gold right before gimping eyes;
                                      while the weak volutate in the slough of despair
                                      the rich feast upon the profits like 
                                      ravens on a rotting carcass, they slowly
                                      take away all your rights condemning them
                                      all outdated, they scourge upon the weak 
                                      like maggots, they form their secret society 
                                      and your membership is declined, you're fed
                                      the empty broth of misery and eventually 
                                      starve and decay like weathered wood,
                                      but, you had your chance when you were 
                                      young and strong, now your insurrection
                                      is but some sod of grass on an empty knell. 

                                                   - John Hardesty 
               
                                      

Quip # 44

                                                      

                            If I had your money and expertise, I'd furnace my two-cents. 

                                                  - John Hardesty  

Apocalypse

                                                APOCALYPSE 

                                The devil's playground in flames. 



                                            - John Hardesty 

When The Rosebud Falls

                                       

                        When aspirations turn into desperations, 
                        When accusations fall into allegations,
                        When confrontation led to consternation, 
                        When irritation gave way to aggravation, 
                        When sensations turned into lacerations, 
                        When temptation led to a new relation,
                        When conversation enlightened an embarkation, 
                        When separation turned into penetration,
                        When exploration sparked into excitation, 
                        When rationalization turned into radicalization, 
                        When manipulation fell onto humiliation,
                        When reexamination conveyed elimination, 
                        When the rosebud fell off its bloom.

                                    -  John Hardesty 



                  

Futility

                                                      

                                  
                                        This sanguine restraint
                                        encumbers ascendancy,
                                        psychagogic spheres
                                        safeguard reality;
                                        once protruding beyond my means,
                                        this last dire lark, all that holds me,
                                        all that I am, yet defeat overwhelms,
                                        this trespasser and enchanter concedes 
                                        this impetuous caprice, whereupon
                                        and whatnot truth unfolds this
                                        inimitable touch for whom
                                        binds this Godhead, mortals morass
                                        in their ignorance conjuring up fables
                                        and myths to subsist with their weakness
                                        and frailty, O thine eyes of a fool for whom
                                        resurrect idiotic clauses to buy themselves
                                        freedom from the inevitable and the
                                        futility of becoming nothingness. 

                                           -  John Hardesty 

Muckraker(Haiku)

                                                       Muckraker(Haiku)

                 
                                                       The whistleblower 
                                                       organizes the muddle
                                                       of truth from fiction.


                                                         - John Hardesty