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Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
There is a spot on the banks of the Ohio River
where rising and falling water levels
have birthed a tree,
100 years ancient,
Whose roots burst forth
To create a cage of wood
And whatever debris it happens to net up.


There is a safe there too,
Half buried by dirt and sand,
And the rotting remains of a dock sunk long ago
laying just below the water's surface,
It's broken post still sticking out a few inches...


A forgotten ferry ramp crumbles to pebbles
just 10 yards upstream.
The concrete foundation of it's pay station
Juts out as a peninsula
when the river drops below 25 feet deep.


The City hides around the bend,
with towers that sometimes peek over the horizon,
and an ever present night-time glow
that never lets this place go absolutely dark.
There are just a handful of stars here,
Ten or 20.
Only the best and brightest,
Receding with time
To the perpetually growing presence
of fluorescent outdoor lighting.


This is a place of ages.
Of 5 year old forbidden mystery
and 8 year old epic adventures
among the apocalyptic rubble of whole city blocks,
Torn down to make way for the levee,
I've know for all my life.


This is a place of 10 year old games with childhood pals
And 15 year old parties-in-secret.
A case of double-deuces and a bottle of schnapps,
and all the other regular tools of teenage rebellion.
It's a place of countless caught catfish
during early morning hours,
When the boat traffic dies down save for giant river barges,
working their way through the locks and dams
that keep the water deep enough for commercial navigation.


My grandfather knew the white-sand beaches here
That once stretched for two solid miles,
And hosted vacationing mid-westerners
and the rebirth of Sun Worship.
His adopted father knew it even better,
working the steamers that made this place civilized.
My own father swam in these waters,
even claims he once swam all the way across and back
and I never call him on it,
though I know this place too well to believe it.


I know this place very well, to say the least.
I've been here more than often,
going way back to when the riverside road ended in a circular turnabout,
where a mostly dead old oak
held a 30 foot long steel cable,
that would swing you out over a hillside
made of broken brick and steel re-bar.
Back before the pumping station's overflow pipes were capped,
and you could echo your voice
through the outlets down by the river,
up to ears on the path along the floodwall.


I still go there,
though not as often as I once did.
It still holds wonder for me,
Magic and mystery...
It's never the same on two different days,
yet it never changes,
and when I think of home,
I think of this spot.
The Title is coordinates for the subject of the poem.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
It's the next best thing!
It's a scream!
It's got a screen!
and a million little buttons
that won't ever do a thing
to erase that feeling
that you're feeling.


why you are always waiting.


like the Rockie's or the Canyon.
like Columbus and the the great depression.
like Woodstock and world wars.
like the Illad and the Odyssey and The Beatles.


something more than
The consumer generation.
a definition through epic episodes.
a defining moment.


The revolution has been sponsored
by manufacturers and broadcasters
and warmongers and pundits
and people getting paid to tell you what you think.
and what do you think?
Why are we content with being incomplete?
unfinished and beat?


What the **** is so Comfy about that seat?


You are not generation X
or Y or Nothing or Nowhere.
or any of these false names they've created
to make us believe we are less than we are.
we've been duped.
the youth is not the future anymore.
It's firmly in the grip of the old and accomplished.
Your fate is their whim for a dollar.
Your life is fuel for the fires.
crass entertainment inspires your desires.


And well, **** that.
pull the wires from your brain
and we'll fight to regain.
what territory they've taken away.
Make decisions for ourselves today.
December 11th, 2011.  Part of a series of Status Updates.  Only now does it gain a proper title.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
There are things that are keepable...
and Things that are not...
Things are remembered...
and things are forgot...
things that are free...
and things that are bought...
things that are lost...
and things that are sought...
things that you don't have...
and things that you've got...
things that are fixed...
and things that are shot...
there are things that are cold...
and things that are hot...
There are things that you cook...
in a pan or a ***...
Things that go anywhere...
until they are caught...
Things that are forced...
to stay in one spot...
there are things that are written...
and things that are wrought...
things that are settled...
and things that are fought...
things that are huge...
and things small like a dot...
and this may not be everything...
but it sure is a lot.
Just some fun with rhymes.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
I swear some mornings,
I can see the Tv snow Playing
On the back of my Eyelids.
I'm Auto-writing,
on Automatic,
This show comes on at Ten O' Clock
P.M.,
Eastern Standard Time.
I'm early morning only late at night.
Welcomed back into the Static Noise
When the sun comes back around.
This man don't rise with the roosters.
I'll be not a slave to circadian rhythms.


PSSSSHHHHHHHH!!!
An alarming blare
Breaks news in dreamland.
The fields need plowing,
Barbarians are at the gate,
The taxman cometh.
There is work to be done.


Half Lidded I sip
The Proletariat's Breakfast,
As the Stars Gently Fade Into Sunrise.
Transport arrives at twenty past six,
And the trains must always run on time.


look me in the eyes and ask me,
Who am I to be angry?
ungrateful?
Skeptical of the Great Society?
Who are we to be Disenfranchised?
Disengaged?
This work only means bills and coins,
purchasing power,
And another month's rent.
150,000,000 jobs,
buying time between Disasters,
or till the future makes
the majority of us obsolete
To the whims of the elite.


This doesn't even feel like surviving.
In fact,
I feel I'm being farmed.
Domesticated.
I keep daydreaming of
a stone shack in the woods,
limestone pulled up out the earth
by my own bare hands
and stacked into a home.
It's Six twenty-five A.M,
and the bus is always late,
and these in-ear headphones
blocks out the rumbling
of a city waking up for work.


I'm still asleep.
I'll call you tonight...
If we wake up.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Michelangelo from marble made man,
Beyond Perfection.
An Ultimate image,
as Apollo's Earthrise on Luna,
or Showcase #4.
Germany has it's Beatles,
Just as Liverpool does too,
And I've seen pictures of a wall that stretches the length of China.


Pyramids rise out of the Deserts of Egypt,
The Jungles of the Aztecs,
and the Mountains of the Mayans.
A Colosseum still stands in Rome,
And every temple envy's the ones in Angkor Wot


For every age a legend.
For every actor a role.
For every writer a story,
and painter a painting,
and general a battle,
and architect a structure.
Wright and Wolfe and
Orwell and Wells and
Kafka and Kubrick and
Lenin and Lennon and McCartney
and MacArthur and Patton
and Plato and Dvořák.


There is a perfect apple pie in every mother's mind.
A perfect game in every pitcher's eye.
A work of art around every corner,
Stuck to refrigerators,
And tucked away underneath children sized beds.
Hanging in every high-school hallway,
Spray painted on every highway overpass.
A Planet-wide gallery
as simple as a finger-painting,
As grand as that canyon out in Arizona.
A world full of masterpieces...


But for me...


Only you...


Only you.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
It's a zero moon night,
And the City still burns bright enough
to steal the stars from the sky.
Like space Ain't got nuthin in it!

Only the Radio Red Eyes
twinkle in their towers for me,
Playing airial scarecrows
For the Jet-Set.

Worry so **** much about the skyline
that you Forgot about the Sky!
Taking men off the moon
so you can run the lights,
so that your building looks nice,
For when whoever else is up
at 1:00 A.M. E.S.T.,
comes barreling down through
the cut in the hill
to finally feast their eyes
on the city that never wakes up.

I'm Never gonna see Mars at this rate.
Another from a series of poems written on a bridge in Cincinnati.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Sometimes it just rains all day.
the sun and the moon and the stars
all take the day off,
Get all gloomy and introspective and ****.
drop deep thoughts
and fill up puddles
and bring meaning to things like
windshield wipers,
and lackluster poetry.


I'm still sixteen,
out much too late,
perched up on the steps of the old bank.
searching for reason
in the glare of small town streetlight.
I'm still seven
when it would just pour down,
I mean literally pour down,
in buckets and all that.
it doesn't rain like that anymore.
Not here. Not anymore.


A storm-front has been working it's way
up out of the southwest
since i have existed.
certainly much longer than that.
it's carved a path from caveman to Kentucky.
and here we are
continuously inspired
by water from the sky.


I'm going to sleep.
it just feels right.
I hope that it will rain all night.
I sleep well.
November 29th, 2011.. For a collection of Status Updates.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
The Intersection
of Interruption and Intermission.
Act 2 has been delayed.
We will come right back
After a word from our sponsors.

Remember when
Remember when meant
More than just a week ago?
When the hill was only
30 years high,
And still,
nothing held the urgency
that seems to permeate
our every desperate action.

I swear we had time, then,
It seems,
So much more than
Aging naturally eats away.
But the multitudes
have multiplied,
as they are want to,
And as the telegraph cables
Come down for corridors of Light,
The speed of time Grows,
Relatively accordingly.

And so, the second part
Of this two part play
Starts 10 years later,
while we dash madder than ever,
racing each other,
to first summit the Crisis Peak.
Now eat your cake.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Sweat sweet with mid-day summer sun.
Skin burns red to blister.
It permits no resistance.
Insistent on shining.
Eyes squint for shadow.
All to rare in this lonely atmosphere.
Rarer breezes blow to tease relief,
But all this provides for view beyond belief.
The city erupts in the Sun's Rays.
Reflecting infinite daily cloud-play off Glassy faced behemoths.
Every ripple sparks diamond waves.
And sometimes
this place doesn't seem so bleak.
In the Summer of 2012, I embarked on a mission to cover a bridge going over the Ohio Rive with poems.  This is just one of those, selected from now more than 60.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Yeah, Every song writer.
Every person ever to pick up a pen and opine.
I feel it.
the cosmos feel it.
let It be felt.


Who can stop it
but ourselves?
an energy sustained on belief.
waves that radiate
and reverberate
and something else.


she captures my thoughts.
and i still lack the words to tell her so, huh.
and maybe we never ride in the same plane.
yet, still...


i feel it.
Let it be felt. right?
Enjoy it for what it is,
and whatever.


infinite rhymes and words strung together,
countless snippets of advice.
an ocean of intentions.
at once the greatest and most painful feeling you could ever have.
and yet,
and still...


let it be felt.
Part of a series of Status Updates from 2012.  Enjoy... and let it be felt.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Trophies for last place,
And a Holiday for every weekend.
A taste of this and that...
OF Italy and Ireland and Asia and Germany
and every township in the county,
and 3 collective Miles of
Portable Toilets,
Strategically Positioned
throughout each event.
cause there is going to be a Lot of ****...

Hooray for whatever we are celebrating this weekend.
Whichever one of the 30 different Woodstocks
Or week long Music Festivals
That exist only so
the Hippest of Hipsters
can congratulate each other
on how Indie they are.

Ya know, it's happy hour somewhere...
Why not party
All Day, Everyday?
Devalue the weekend
Like we have thanksgiving
And New Years.
A Five Kay For the Common Cold,
And We'll even give trophies for last place.
Cause we're all winners here.
and we're all hungry.
And What represents your heritage better than
Pizza or sauerkraut or General Tso's
And endless flowing barrels of refreshing, Ice cold, Domestically brewed and Nationally brand recognized Alcoholic Beverages?

IT's The Great Dumb Down, Charlie Brown!!!
A symptom of the Universe
If there ever was one.
Mass anesthesia to keep us all content
With our collective mediocrities,
our Forfeit Potential,
Our Day Job that doesn't pay very well,
But kind has benefits.
So we stay on.
In fear of nothing better.
It makes feel important.
Like Wheel of Fortune makes us feel smart.
(Wow, you can spell?!)...
Dwindling returns in a world of Beige and Pastels
And the Muted Grays of limestone concrete.
We Accept less and we Get less and we accept less and we Get less
And On And on and on,
till we hit that lowest common cultural denominator,
where your race is what food you eat,
And we all qualify for the special Olympics.
A selection from a series of poems written on the handrail of a bridge.  June 13th, 2012
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Once one-hour Photograph
Now instant and digital
So we can Reminisce over
Recent events in
Less than half a Minute.

Mere Memory Stands shadow
to our impatient Vanity
captured in 3 by 5ives
Filed away in
Albums for every occasion.

What use is the Function
If it Needs constant Reminders?

Our inefficient use of time
Leaves us stuck with
Glossy Poser Smiles
and Piles and Piles
of Throw-away Pictures...
Dusting off an Ancient (2004) piece.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Projection Display.
I Hate myself... And therefore you too
Because I don't have time to hate myself
So you'll do just fine.

But I'm tryin, Ya know?
tryin to make change,
But ain't nobody got nothin but twenties
And all I have is Canadian
a pocket full of loonies
with nobody to blame but myself
If there is actually anyone to blame.
Lashing out Confused
Yet fully aware of my folly.
So, yeah... Sorry bout' that.
http://imgur.com/gallery/ODsRAMH

On the Taylor-Southgate Bridge, 2014
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
Burning in the Midnight Sun.
On the Other side of the World Tonight, It's Bright.
Tossing and Turning To the whims of a Jet-Stream.
Steam Heat from
The Other side of the World Tonight.
Who wants to be
a Cement Sidewalk,
Stuck to the Earth,
And Waiting to Crumble?
Waiting For the Sun to Rise
In the Western Skies
Just one time.
How can you sit in one place for so Long
and not Die,
Knowing it's Bright,
On the Other side of the World tonight.


Somehow...
Someway...
We'll all make like Storm Molecules.
Racing For the Sun,
We'll evaporate up out of this ocean,
And Climb towards the Stars,
Only to find ourselves
Condensing
When the Sun Reaches back around to
The Other side of the World tonight...


Something in me makes me want to leave this Atmosphere,
turn into a satellite.
I'm Sunken Ship.
I'm Staring up through thousands of feet of ocean.
Slowly becoming Deformed
By Crushing Pressures.
It's midnight or so
I'm told.
It's the time where days change places,
And I'm stuck in the cold part of the pool,
where the blue turns to black.
where it gets hard to breath.
And It's the farthest place away from
The Other side of the World tonight.


Rocketship come save me.
Take me out beyond the 7 Spheres,
Atmos and Stratos and whatnot.
Up beyond earthly gravity's reach,
Where Sol reigns beyond need for days,
and it matters not what happens,
On the Other side of the World Tonight...
Originally written on a sidewalk in Cincinnati Ohio.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
What hopeful words,
once lamented
upon one's ear.
thought not to hear...
Now fall to silent ruin.
So who are we
to knock down palaces
built of hearts?
Just to play another round?
that we've gotten this far
only to find there are no cards left.
Should not this alone be enough?
        that the game ended
                  in Stalemate?
No point in tempting
Shaky foundations.
Better to let time erode
Memories and Emotions.
Gather up your chips.
And find a new table.
And Maybe years from now.
We'll meet on vacation...
About a girl.  Duh.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
LET'S RAISE A TOAST
TO THE HERO OF ZEROS.
THE NOMINAL PHENOM.
THE LEGENDARY LOSER!
LAY WREATHS AT THE FEET
OF THE SLACKER KING,
AND ASK FOR NOTHING,
WHICH IS ALL HE CAN GIVE YOU.

NO SONG OR DANCE
OR MINIMAL EFFORT.
JUST AND ONLY
ABJECT FAILURE,
TO SPREAD LIKE BUTTER
OVER AN ARMY OF SLEEPWALKERS,
WHO TRUDGE THROUGH THE NIGHT
TO GET NOTHING DONE.

SAY A WORD FOR THE MAN
WITH TOO MUCH TIME ON HIS HANDS.
WHO ISN'T WORKING ON ANYTHING
SO THAT WE CAN HAVE EVERYTHING.
http://imgur.com/gallery/lMRXNZ0/

On the Taylor-Southgate Bridge, Summer 2014
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
And yet. and still.
here i am.
here we are.
wondering where this will take us.
the future is always yet to come. right?
frightened children gather at its foot.
looking up and out
and so on and so forth.
unsure of the inevitable.
and yet. and still.
here i am.
here we are.
I like long titles.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
I keep thinking of excellent titles
for stories I haven't written yet.
Does that still give them life?
Damnable muse!
rushing in unprepared.
you leave a graveyard of thoughts
for lack of pen and paper.
abrupt endings scattered about
in the back of old notebooks.
an endless stream of stutter steps,
of scratched out
phrases.
don't you know
the name should come last?
we've given existence to written down regret,
reason to rue my very first love.
what a Jealous thing you are.
to clip the wings of baby birds.
they were ours.
November 8th, 2011. From a collection of Status Updates.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
You'll find somebody,
She keep's sayin'.
Somebody you'll have to settle for.
Someone who you'll take care of
cause they take care of you.
And you'll be modestly happy.
You'll find somebody
that isn't her.
Someone close to what she was,
But never fully capturing
that thing she has about her.
You'll find an Impostor.
A genetic twin/clone reject
of what you wanted.
Of who you wanted,
when you still thought about
what you wanted.
You'll find someone else and
Pretend to be in love with them.

And you'll never admit it,
But you will always know.
Still Searching

— The End —