Category Archives: identity

August 22, 2022 · 4:17 pm

Somewhere In The Middle – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits.” Michael Novak

Somewhere In The Middle

She tells her early life three ways,
the innocent child who was bullied 
by her calculating brother,
the young teen rejected by her
indifferent father or,
the older teen rescued by her
caring brother,
victim, martyr, sufferer,
and somewhere in the middle of 
it all lies the truth which has been
mangled and pressed down,
like a bitter vintage slowly sipped
until it no longer offends and
tastes sweet in the jumbled retelling,
a mask of normalcy and a ritual
that hides an inability to accept 
the lived experience. 


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights reserved ®️

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August 9, 2022 · 2:33 pm

Type? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse De is hosting the Quadrille with an invitation to write a poem using the word type or any of its forms.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – What’s Your Type?

Photo: mrmrsintagetypewriters.com. The once popular duck egg blue Imperial portable typewriter. We still have one in working order, it outlived the Brother Electronic typewriter.

“There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.” E.M. Forster

Type?

Did Cicero use helvetica or
plain it with times roman,
and how did Gurdjieff get
nine or Jung four, while 
chapman gave love five,
and who knows if I'm 
sagacious, diabetic, alpha, 
A positive or negative?
I do know imperial is my type.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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July 31, 2022 · 3:12 pm

What Do You Fear? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: found at psychologytoday.com

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” Albert Einstein 

What Do You Fear?

Fear has curled its fetid sinews around
our collective human throat choking 
the brain and placing us solely in the
amygdala, reactive, angry, turgid, 
anachronistic egos looking for a past
to make sense of the future,
taking refuge in childhood memories,
seeking comfort in the midst of change
by attacking everything that arises as
progress, as does every generation;
equality, divergence, health, gay, trans,
what does it matter to you, 
did you miss out, will you be murdered
in your sleep by a view of difference, 
or is it that you can't accept that what
mummy taught you isn't quite right?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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July 29, 2022 · 2:54 pm

I Wonder – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Grace is hosting Poetry Forms with an invitation to write a Loop Poem where the last line of each line in a stanza becomes the first line of successive lines. For more detail follow the link below:

I’m submitting a non-rhyming Loop Poem.

dVerse Poets – Poetry Forms – Loop Poetry

Photo: gettyimages.com found at wired.com

“Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future.” Daphne Rose Kingma 

I Wonder

I wonder now what I might pick up,
up is the surge of my recovering,
recovering spontaneity well loosed,
loosed from the hollows of routine.

This new ground on which to stand,
stand I will no matter the inconvenience,
inconvenience is mostly perspective,
perspective is mostly inconvenience.

And what of the idle threat of progress,
progress really needs to be threaded,
threaded carefully and hung on a wall,
wall of all my dead trophies.

Such things need to die that I might,
might live as if for the first time,
time being a fragility of the ego I,
I wonder now what I might pick up.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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July 2, 2022 · 1:23 pm

Irrespective Of What Others Might Think – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-jacket-holding-black-water-bottle-6530604/

“Instead of worrying what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.” Roy T. Bennett

Irrespective Of What Others Might Think

Is your life compartmentalised,
a series of snapshots reassembled
to look as if something is happening,
in the way that others think a life
should be happening, or have you
reordered your understanding,
embracing the long view,
encompassing a stretching,
an elasticising of time perception
so that everything is a part of a whole,
and the whole is a unity, a seamless
flow of energy, irrespective of what
others might think?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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June 22, 2022 · 1:46 pm

What Do You Really Want? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sanaa is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about peer pressure (something that affects adults as much as teens)

dVerse Poets – Poetics – When It Comes To Peer Pressure

Photo: found at cracked.com

“Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.” Aesop

What Do You Really Want?

They love your work,
you spoke so powerfully
and with such passion,
they want to talk to you about
coming on to the committee,
it could lead to greater things,
take time to think about it; which
we both know is not true, time will
become a loud ticking bomb.
Just imagine, he goes on, the 
public profile, imagine the job
offers, you'd be great at this,
and we need you (now comes 
the truth). Rep. X chairs this 
one, he's going places too,
how's that? And, O, what's 
her name, the one you like,
she's on it too. They pay for
everything, the food, think 
about it, what do you say?
I remember he said take time,
and there it is, the pressure
bomb. I'll let you know tomorrow,
which we both know that means
no, but I can't come right out
and just say it, I'm weighing the 
worn track in my mind that wants
to, used to always, say yes, but
the wreckage of so many of these
ego trips lie in my wake and sucked
the life out of me.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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June 13, 2022 · 3:24 pm

Who’s Inside? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo by Evelyn Chong : https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-standing-in-front-of-mirror-1674060/

“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.” Jean Cocteau 

Who's Inside?

When you look in the mirror
who is looking back at you,
what are you thinking or
are you avoiding thinking,
especially about yourself,
who are you anyway and
how are you you at any time?

What is the sum of you and
how are you being you?
Your mirror refuses to hide
the imperfect imagined you,
that constructed fictional you,
mirrors always offer what 
you wish to find, but they
never look inside for you.



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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May 14, 2022 · 2:33 pm

Better To Question – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: MabelAmber at pixabay.com

“Consider what story you want to tell.” Marie Brennan

Better To Question

My nature is to question,
to give an answer can, on the
occasion of your being somewhat lost,
be very helpful when I direct you to the
very place you want to get to, but only
geographically, no one really wants or
even needs solutions to what they 
intuitively know they must experience 
along life's road, our story is simply that,
our story, we cannot be anyone else's story.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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May 6, 2022 · 1:31 pm

Better The Full Flavoured Precarity – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Art by Igor Morski found at the10most.com

“Always be a first rate-version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.” Judy Garland

Better The Full Flavoured Precarity

Life is essentially
taking off other people's faces
and learning to live what is behind
our own, accepting that which arises
from within, rather than seeking 
external stimulus as validation like a
mantle one puts on when seeking
affirmation, or projecting convenient
lies of success for a kiss, complete
fakery in exchange for smooth living
that tastes like chalk, better the full
flavoured life even when a little precarity
lurks at its edges.



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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April 3, 2022 · 2:09 am

What Now? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: agamaszota at pixabay.com

“The future … seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie …” Edward Young

What Now?

Repetitive Days,
clamping to the bench,
the clang of metal,
choosing actions,
being filtered,
tectonic turning plates,
left and right,
spindle and handle,
sinew cranking hard,
the heft of life,
an endless vista of 
grind and broken 
dreams as mince,
what now the plate?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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