Poetry: Selections from Daniel F. James

Bucking the System

I've met the grinning ass kissers

slinking in offices, wearing down the carpet.

Seen enough flag wavers, with

sweaty palms gripping poles, hearts hollow.

Too many team players, hugging each other,

spineless in mutual back slaps, stealing breaths.

Not singular, not fiery, not breaking,

free from the tangle of puppet strings.

I warn, oh I warn, beneath the streetlamp's glow -

"Somewhere, road turns, someone sermonizes:

'No "I" in team,' they chant, but forget,

There's "I" in independence, dammit.

"I" is the monarch in individuality,

the soldier in integrity, marching,

alone if must. But marching.

Shun the team, encirclement of the individual,

their anthem of conformity - a sure death.

Kiss ass, and you kiss your self goodbye,

wave a flag, and it's just your own surrender.

I'll stick with the ones who buck the system,

ones who spell out their "I" with a sneer,

who don't kiss up, but kick hard, with steel-toe boots.

Lone wolves, not sheep, chewing through chains.

Remember, remember in your pulse's echo -

independence is the "I" they can't strip bare,

a single, fiery soul can't be swallowed,

by the gaping, impersonal mouth of, "team".

Modern Man's Lament

I'm the man of the now, millennium's child,

Wired, tired, digitally compiled.

A multicultural mosaic, dismantled, deconstructed,

Anatomically awry, ecologically abducted.

Links bind me, downloads define me,

Information inflow, humanity outflow.

Upsizing's virtues, downsizing's curse,

Tech-savvy servitude, progress immersed.

High-tech's hobo, life on the knife's edge,

In bi-coastal motions, a multitasking pledge.

Bytes in a blink, speed without thought,

In the rush, I am lost, maybe I'm naught.

Old waves crash on new shorelines,

Schooling in the past, while the future confines.

Inner child wandering, outward in flight,

A soul's quest in a silicon night.

Wired for warmth in a cold, coded world,

Cool customer yearning, reality unfurled.

Voice the command, watch me decay

Tomorrow's promise, with yesterday's clay.

Surfing through databases, a digital roam,

My essence encrypted in the ether's dome.

Interactive motions, hyperactive notions,

Then glowing sudden - an atomic potion.

In the byte beat's dance, I find my stance,

Yet seeking connection, not just advance.

With every data wave I ride, heart inside,

I am but human, in tech's grand tide.

Memories in the Machinery

I toiled away on the factory line, relentless noise,

disturbed my senses, mounting into cacophony's embrace.

But I made it through the savage din of that first night.

A temporal ambush, sudden, in mechanical rhythm's clasp,

the past, a dagger, struck with memories too vivid, too precise.

Flashbacks, with their vibrant scars, transported me there.

To the arid heart of a distant, war-torn lraq,

under a sky too wide, it mocked the man made confines.

Endless desert, stretching, mocking with its vastness.

Before me laid the canvas of my yesterdays, painted in sand,

the air, thick with whispers of the sun-baked land's secrets.

I could feel the heat, impatient, pressing against weary skin.

Grains of desert grit, a second skin, clung with stubborn might,

To a face that had seen too much, could not, now, un-see.

Transcendent Waltz of Dawn

Within the dreamer's chest, a morning star, enclosed,

Faint herald of the dawn that breaks the spectral night,

The sleeper's racing heart, in waking light, exposed,

Where fantasy and truth in tangled weaves alight.

This borderland of dreams, where day and shadow kiss,

A threadbare curtain hangs, thin veil false between and true,

Love's delicate ballet, found in the liminal bliss

Dances over the edge, where old gives way to new.

In this soft glow of morn, the dreamer dares to hold,

A specter turned to flesh, by tender rays transformed,

A heart once veiled by night feels now the sun's bold gold,

And in this gentle light, their once-stark world reformed.

The answer lives, where dreams and waking moments combine,

Within this dance of love, where spectral stars align.

Touches Spark the Dust of Stars

Touches spark the dust of stars within, a cavern-chest alight,

Each night, a farm where constellations bloom, mind's quiet field.

The dreamer, traveler of shadowed paths, touches edge of sight,

Where essence of enigmatic guide to searcher's heart's revealed.

Dusk weaves spells as dreamer's feet on whispering grasses tread,

Eyes drink deep the sky's dark wine, where dreams and night are wed.

In the mind's hush, revelation shatters fragile boundary line,

Dream and waking blur where the ephemeral and flesh combine.

Dawn on tiptoe peers, as through the veil a figure takes its form,

A paradox, beyond dream's mist, in waking world reborn.

Heart and soul, the tangible from nights deep realms unbound,

A living enigma, breathes and stirs, in day's bright sphere found.

This specter of the night, now clad in morning's tender light,

Seals within the dreamer's chest a star, banishing the night.

Daniel F. James is a talented poet whose journey is as captivating as his verse. From a young age, James' creative spirit led him to craft stories and poems, showcasing his vivid imagination. Although his passion for poetry was briefly set aside during his time in the military, it was through the trials of the Gulf War that he discovered the therapeutic power of writing.