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JR Rhine Apr 2017
Woman at diner who knew Fugazi,
I wear all these pins
on my denim jacket
waiting for someone like you
because a t-shirt isn’t
loud enough.

Woman who knew Fugazi,
waitress at diner,
had “seen them twenty times,”
without exaggeration—

with cracking olive skin
and graying curly black
hair to her shoulders,

the light refracting off my pin
my friend bought at a record store
in Philly      reflecting her the image
of a slender, voluptuous youth
donned in fake leather
worn Levis and beat Vans

shaking her mop of jet-black curly hair
in a throng of like-minded dressed
individuals in a dingy club
          angsty Washingtonians
fleeing the Reagan Youth

mad at Capitalism
mad at Middle Class,
mad at Excess, Abuse, Malaise—
driven by the furious punk rhythms
of sweat-drenched Fugazi.

Woman who knew Fugazi,
friends with Ian MacKaye,
hadn’t seen him in years—

waitress at restaurant
where the scrambled eggs are dry
and the coffee is stale.

Waitress at diner,
Mother now,
wife, adult,

                 [[punk]]
at heart.
Andrew T Apr 2016
Washingtonians, this Wednesday afternoon, come to the Starbucks on 1600 K Street to become acquainted with some young, interesting, average income level Asian American guys and gals. Instead of meeting Asian American doctors, lawyers, and consultants, you’ll meet Dr. Dre copycats, alcoholic paralegals, and T-Mobile wireless salespeople.

These guys and gals are looking to meet new friends that include: white, black, Hispanic, or any other race of people, just as long as you aren’t a F.O.B. Because after all, they don’t want to perpetuate the stereotype that Asians only hang out with other Asians. Just kidding, we love our F.O.B brothers and sisters! But **** stereotypes.

If you are a Washingtonian who likes drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, stop by and make a new Asian American friend who will provide mixers and match you on a blunt. Please, do not ask these guys and gals for college study notes for Math or Bio, because all of them have dropped out of college to pursue their artistic passions, like: writing a novel about having a white group of friends and being the token who reads Tolkien and likes Toking; playing electric guitar in a grunge, punk, post-emo garage band with your black buddies who like Fugazi and bad brains but ******* hate Green day for selling out; and drawing sketches and painting portraits of the half-Asian girl you’re dating on a wide canvass, but really you’re secretly into selfies and taking photos of breakfast on Instagram.

We don’t discriminate against the kind of alcohol you drink, whether it be wine, beer, or liquor—within reason please don’t bring Franzia or Rolling rock, this isn’t college anymore. Yes, we get it, you’re highly considering attending this group because you’re a huge Haruki Murakami fan and you’re wondering two questions: are our Japanese American patrons also huge fans of the author, and do our patrons behave in a similar fashion to Murakami’s characters like Toru Watanabe and Toru Okada?

First, our Japanese American patrons are huge fans of Murakami and they own books like Sputnik Sweetheart and The Windup Bird Chronicle, but they also think the author often is obsessed with Western culture, in a way that possibly, and seriously possibly transforms him into a Brett Easton Ellis derivative based on Ellis’s American ****** and Glamorama.

Second, no these particular patrons do not behave like Murakami’s characters, because they’re real, living, breathing human beings, and not some fantasy figure or made-up person! But enough of the rant, please come though and let’s have conversations about jazz and talking cats.

While we respect Asian American actors like Ken Jeong and Randall Park, we really aren’t interested in having a lengthy dialogue about The Hangover’s Asian **** scene, or how Park was kinda offensively funny in The Interview. Although Park is awesome in Fresh Off The boat! All we really want is to just drink jack and cokes and smoke Marlboro lights and have conversations about the latest trends in indie rock and Hip Hop culture, and whether Citizen Kane was better than Casablanca, or vice versa.

At the meeting, we will have our guest speaker Jeremy Lin’s college roommate George Park answer questions about Lin, as well as a special appearance by Steve Yuen’s ex-girlfriend Marcy Abernathy who will give us an inside scoop to Yuen’s fetishes as well as his quirky habits. We will also be providing free snacks like LSD Pho noodle soup and Marijuana Mochi ice-cream. On a serious note, we’ll be giving out guilt-free Twinkies.

Before you arrive at the Starbucks, you’ll be getting a name tag and a free A.A.A T-shirt that wasn’t made by little children from China; instead, the shirts are made by Ronald Mai, our aspiring fashion designer whose twitter handle is @thatsmyshirtwhiteman! If you’re interested in coming out to the group our first meeting is this Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Leave your apprehension at the door and walk in with a warm smile, as you’re greeted by an expressionless face. And phoreal if your car is messed up and you require a ride, please call A.A.A’s number at (202) 576-2AAA (we know we’re phunny). Hope to see you there, and if you don’t come, you’re a ******* racist! But seriously come out and meet some cool *** people.
Derek Yohn  Oct 2013
fugazi
Derek Yohn Oct 2013
People of Wal-Mart:
what the **** is wrong with you?
You are reducing our lives
and prices in unison...

Today, in passing, i saw on T.V.
a special report:  a year
after super-storm Sandy, New Jersey
still hasn't gotten its
sand dunes back.

This is news?

It took 5 years for the
Gulf Coast to begin recovering
from Hurricane Opal.
No national headlines about
Okaloosa Island a year later.
It was flat.  It didn't
used to be.

A year after Hurricane  Katrina,
all i heard was that Kanye West
thought President Bush didn't
care about black people.  But
Wal-Mart helped with logistics
deliveries.  Because Bush asked (kind of).
We  basically lost a major city
that time.

Where was our airborne toxic event?
Our 15 minutes post mortem?

Thanks for helping, Wal-Mart.
But this is all your fault.

Because without cheaper stuff,
the People of Wal-Mart
would still be able to think.
They would know that
consumerism is great, but also
that it is an identity crisis.
A buzz in their heads.
Our nation fights wars
for capitalism,
but our soldiers fight
for their lives.

So i will see you on
Black Friday, Wal-Mart.

We are dying here in the
South, we have to save
a penny where ever we can.

And, People of Wal-Mart, don't forget:
No president cares about any individual.
The greater good prevails.
And **** your sand dunes, New Jersey.
shoutout to Don de Lillo's modern masteriece "White Noise"....loss of identity and its re-establishment thru consumerism.

You are not what you own.

fugazi = fake (italian)
SIght Sep 2014
As humans, we are quite thoughtful
Given such a beautiful and powerful mind
Yet we aren't trained to utilise its magnificence
So at certain times we tend to overthink the awful
And dwell on all that we know
If only we had continued to explore as children
O' I wonder what is there to find
In our society though, conforming is virtue
So what fate will befall me if I stray far from the collective mind?

We speak of the Unknown as if we know it
It's majesty forever lost in a fugazi
Our own little lie in our own little world
Try as we might she remains unknown
A wonder untold, a joint unrolled
And as her mysteries unfold
She reveales herself again as we had always known
Unknown

The essence of something is Nothing
The essence of thought is Being
For it could not exist without it
Without silence, sound would not be
Without space, matter would not be
It is the home of awareness
It is everlasting abundance
It is the beginning and the end
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2020
i don't really question the existence of god;
i also read
a very pop poem by a maya angelou -
the phenomenal woman -
what's great about pop poetry:
unlike pop music - yes...
these are the lyrics and also:
thank god there is no music to accompany
it...
i might just like it...
   then again: Wagner... a rarity -
in that he also wrote the libretto for the operas...
perhaps that's why the music feels
a tad bit as an indigestion -
         heavy on the germanic side...
but pop poetry: well...
it's for people who probably wouldn't
want to experience a democracy
of the whole "affair"...
who's a jack spicer or an al purdy in this:
teasing of leashes to tug at
the greatest number of acolytes -
           words although once: written
with a blood of pigeons - this diluted
ink from flight -
                     and on some variation
of flimsy paper -
           maya angelou doesn't resonate
with me like: hell...
even walt whitman doesn't resonate
with me... what resonates with me
is the english...
tongue of many abodes:
i feel sluggish and shy to have to burrow in
this tongue for:
no reasons really given...
i'm not running off to claim a reading
of louis zukofsky or a delmore schwarz...
i like how the hebrews can retain
status of missing the stereotype galore
of: become lumber-mill owners having
started off selling toothpicks...
   i don't question the existence of god in as
much: i am a fiction nugget in what's
already an apparent: loss of sensibility -
that i imagine a grave and the shallow warmth
of a shadow marrying itself to night:
how the shadow has married itself
to the sea of night and how i have:
only bare minimum inclinations for the project
with a thought: here and there...
i have come to distrust the faculty of
memory: in that... i am also purely
unimaginative...
   i couldn't conjure you a Dumbo even if i tried...
content on the restraints given:
i do imagine myself in two ways:
a breaking of the neck when falling
on the gallows...
or turning into a pickled cucumber stashed
away in some obscurity... like a prison cell:
even though i have done nothing so wrong
as to give me justification for enduring
such squalor...
but that's that... in a prison cell
i can imagine myself staging a coup d'etat of
lying back and watching a memory cinema
like "something new"...

jude law: the third day...
the music hones in on the project -
alias? the wicker man...
so nothing new: but a welcome reinvention...
i'm just wondering whether or not
demdyke stair provided the music...
probably not...
            it's the wicker man through and
through...

  as i sometimes digest culture:
i can find a canvas to meet an outlet and
it's hardly a critique:
oh i'm not that rich to hold
a sensible job at a newspaper
where i am paid to watch television
and make critique of it...
                would i?
                what a formidable platitude
of expectations...
  
             why don't i question the existence
of god: teasing at a gnosticism... perhaps...
at judaic phoneticism: obviously...
but no...
some ruth Ginsberg dies...
a supreme judge...
i have had one notable experience
of man made law: a revision of thou
shall not steal in my life...
i was a witness of a theft...
   i was on the team of the grieved party...
a witness accuser -

      we were walking a car pulled up
my fwend's phone was ripped from
his hands: i asked for the number plates
to be noted...
they were... due process was furthered
and i was summoned to look
at mugshots...
i summoned the little gremlin to court...
the incident happened in the night
but for lack of imagination:
my memory is furnace -

               in his (the gremlins') defence
a photograph was used to debase my assurance
from leaving pristine confrontation
against the use of a mugshot...
the year was: when england won
the ashes...
     the defence presented a photograph:
and argument: can you recognise this face -
the picture was dated:
in the days when photographs still
had a vivid neon crayon of red
imprinted on them: as i pointed out -
two years from now i hope to be sporting
a missing chin... i.e. a beard...

i don't think there was any weight to
my argument...
after all: the injured party didn't recognise
the mugshot - i did...
i don't actually know whether
the drive-by phone-jacker was convicted...
it's beside the point:

gravity - an unquestionable law...
gravity and death -
     the film moon starring sam rockwell:
and there i was thinking that
clones would only be used to further
the projects of centaurs and caesars...
i was so ******* wrong...
the soul destroying project of:
only one authenticity left to deal with...
this clone is a machine deposit...
it's not a would be: futuristic project
to keep death at bay...
anyway...

    i am sooner to find myself in
the "supreme court" of a law that states
itself paramount and unbiased -
adjective adjective adjectives...
       that sort of law i can stand...
   but to come across... nuances...
man's inhibitions...
man's jurisprudence jargon of synonyms
to lessen the blow:
something less hoisin comforting
in a marinade and: peppery / itchy /
sneeze conjurer...

          i will sooner come across a law
of a deity: like gravity - mortality
is itself a bundle of tenure possibilities /
day-dreams -
i will sooner come across that:
yes... deism and that's because...
a theist would want gravity to be bulldozered
for an interlude in miracles...
but i will sooner come across
these laws...
than... confined to a court...
have to stand sober and marionette-esque
pretty to specify all the plethoras
of nuance... that man ordeals himself
with...
i.e. a theft is not a theft when...
the third party recognises the culprit
but the injured party doesn't...
at least that's what it felt like from
my experience: i didn't hear a follow up
on the passing of judgement -

           well... at this point i am not surprised
that everything i write has a tinge
of juvenilia - it's the same base project
of 1 + 1 = 2 and: god exists or doesn't...
i'm so far beside myself:
the demiurge as a bad joke for the greek
polytheists -
       is or isn't: question or no question:
fundamentally fudge-packing
and custard goo ruining a smile -
best looking toward those serious
orthodox closures from the russians
on the topic...

  arbeit macht frei: would be a question
imposed by the workaholics -
which is never a never real question...
to write toward a tongue that
will never be spoken that only eyes
will decipher...
i never read what i write...
as i write what i see i automate
on the basic principle of: extending
beyond the friction of the digits -
fugazi *******!
fugazi jackson *******...
a half smoked cigarette in my lips
starting to draw ms. amber's wetting -
nothing like smoking tobacco
via a soaked filter stinking of
                       maple syrup of a bourbon...

but that the topic remains:
the laws of men and all of man's nuances...
at least there was something akin
to keeping sanity with:
all are equal before death
and a ledge...
             aren't all... equal?
      all are equal before death:
death the court jester of the versailles
of heavens...
   death the joker death cry me a clown...
cry me ****** frictions that
can become an eternal smile!
death no bomb death the joke
death of deaths and death's ashore
sunbathing on the tide
of the Styx with imitation of Thames...

      evelyn waugh's gilbert pinfold's ordeal...
pushed to the limits of
a stress membrane being breached:
a claustrophobia of any and all ego projects:
akin to egoism -
my metaphor for the schizoid "adventure":
or what it was first:
a promising future via bilingualism...

but that man has these laws...
his own graces and his own demises -
the hindering bias for:
money juggling and monkey rendering
the concept of honest work:
in the service sector can there be
an authenticity of work?
with all the loitering and keeping up
appearances "in between"...

i bellow with a mule's agony of a last
breathable breath to source
the vanity of cyclopses -
   i no longer can hear anything for
the worth of these letters and these words
just automate themselves:
i see auroras of a congestion that
allows me to escape this poorly lit
night sky...
a moonless night promenade...

                i hyperventilate with
a purpose to only pursue a vanity that's
the least: that it doesn't rhyme and
propose a fire for the invitation
of stressor memory bundles...
my little corner of impatience becomes:
a penitent proof of...
worthless unimaginative spell-binding...
but at the same time i am lost
should i come across a formal lingo...

                       a language of translation
or a language of: feral and honest locality -
that which has to be preserved for
some ulterior this that and the other...
it's no surprise that charles dickens
isn't celebrated on the continent...
should he be?
   i'd like for him to be celebrated:
don pickwick...
                
               just how man passes laws...
this jury on the possible
irregularities of the heavenly spheres...
the arthritis of the glue
that stands firmest when
the moon swallows a shower
of meteors...
gobbles them down with
a pauper's glee...
              that there must be a dinosaur
graveyard and: no-brainer explanation
for the meteor -
how an why this meteor that
killed off the dinosaurs hasn't
been romanticised and given a name...

hell: call a ***** a ***** a screwdriver
a camel jockey...
even if the name for earth:
is this same blunt: earth...
that the moon is still a bland scythe...
bleeding gums murphy...
but it would be nice to have a name
for such an event -
Mr. Oppenheimer -
the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs...
how's that?
there's a mt. everest...
there's a name for a turtle of a rock
that's Ayrs in How-Stray-La-La....
             i can call an atom a proton a neutron
and an electron...
there's hydrogen and there's helium...
i can give names to:
even though my authentic
materialistic atheism sensibility doesn't permit
me like some vanguard vegan / jacobin
mention... Kronos or Hyperion...

          **** for thought:
big bang... is pristine in it being:
so uninviting to resonate with:
well... it does... all murders of the modern...
i'd like to call the meteor that killed
off the dinosaurs and ushered in
the advent of the spider monkeys:
the **** simils and the **** sepia and
the **** sapiens as...
  
same old same old variation
of caucasian in mishaps -
  some grandfather mandarin -
some father mongol -
   some turk of a son...
           whittle ******* of brides that's
part Viennese pastry
   and part London gluttonies of the broken
bones pie...

i'm here for the party: are you here
for the party? we're here for the party!
i couldn't imagine myself as anything
more than an extension
of the primo party project:
eating the culinary half-oyster of an
egg that's a poultry-abortion...
i love it!
   i love it so much i scramble it...
i poach it... i soft and hard boil it...
i even add a scallion from time to time...
i'm here for the party...
here's to... still using language that
never bothered to settle down to tow
a mute... buttonz of galore...

                well... it could have helped
to conjure up a parthenon of sorts...
a get-together of imaginary side projects -
but the modern sensible man
this highly elevated man wrestling
with some also unseen
microscopic and tuning his worth
to an argument for: more more more...
i'm actually devastated by this new guise
of atheistically prone materialistic
sensibility: a word salad or just
some forever golgotha custard come about
from crushing bones...

i was sensible once... when i knew of
joseph stalin: the little georgian that
hijacked the russians...
or adolph ******: the austrian that
hijacked the germans...
  i was sensible once...
this is no time to be sensible...
this is a time to be: wholly pointless and
incessant!
why wait?!
Oculi  Jul 2022
The Tide
Oculi Jul 2022
There's comfort in discomfort
And love in being lost
There's thinking and there's knowing
There's fire in the frost

I find myself at the end of a short journey
Most everyday, these days, if I'm honest
And I find I don't remember the journey
Soon, I won't remember it happened
Even forgetting the ending to it
A journey to my friend's house or the store
It's all sand that was washed away
By the ever-forming tides in my brain

I wish the tides were more effective, obviously
Wash me away as a whole entity, cleanse the world
They say there's pain in forgetting
Which I guess would explain why I'm like this
I have a friend who used to say they were a cancer
It was when we were younger and I didn't get it
Maybe it was because of their zodiac, I thought
But now I'm older and now I get it

After about a week of deliberation, I see it now
This, in a sense, is a song or a tale
That, if you look closely, debates the ocean
A frightening and dark depth of immeasurability
Would it be a pop culture reference now;
If I were to say I'd see for myself
Or would it simply be a pretentious reiteration
Made in the poorest of tastes?

My best years are behind me, I tell myself always
Thinking "oh, how I've wasted my time upon time"
But I've been telling myself this for my whole life
So when the **** were my best years, really?
I am perhaps the most attuned I have ever been
Rather than a teen singing opera in the streets
I am an adult screaming into metal tubes
Pretending that one day it will make me a living
Stretching my body thin and disappearing under pools
Pools of sweat, blood and tears, in a manner of dramaticness
The sun burns my skin off and the salt in the waves irritates the exposed muscle

That previous line was too long and it didn't fit the scheme
But I think that sort of helps with the deranged nature of the prose I present
I say to myself as I keep writing lines that are almost as long as that one

What the **** is rock music?
People tell me "oh I don't follow what goes on with rock music"
Or they ask me "what kind of rock music do you enjoy?"
But then we're counting Elvis Presley and Les Rallizes Dénudés as the same genre

Rambling on as usual, which presents a conundrum, do I finish the poem yet?
Or do I expose more of the thoughts with no connection?
I guess the connection is these are the things that keep me awake in the dead of night
And these are also the ones that I wake up for
Here's another one: Why do I love?
It comes so quick and stays so long and pains me to say that it churns my stomach
It makes no sense and though it's an impulse I cannot control I wish I had some modicum of understanding
And there's an even longer line, to show how strongly I feel about this!

You know, the reason I switched subject materials (or maybe I didn't even do so)
is partially because I forgot I was writing this, which fits in with the subject to begin with
It comes and goes in waves and threes, triumvirates of pathetic hasty fugazi deliberation
Ill-considered and hazardously conceived, murdered at birth
In a video game, that'd be called "spawn camping", and I for some reason felt the need to point this out

The time I tried killing myself (or succumbing to these waves, if you will)
It was the very waves that prevented me from it
I stood, perched, completely naked but for a pair of underwear, on my desk, looking out my open window
I felt the need to jump and I didn't even think about who might miss me on that day, I could think of no one
But then I kept thinking and things came up, musical concepts or scenes from films or random thoughts about historical figures
And before I knew it, I was sitting.
And though I'd felt it just as strongly as before, I could somehow even procrastinate suicide
Now if that isn't a superpower, I don't know what is!

The waves, they crashed against my open skull and my exposed brain matter
And before I knew it, I faced both the predicament of pebbles and skin
My amygdala and hippocampus were both as flat and smooth as the skin of a newborn
And yet as wrinkly and terrifying as Willem Dafoe in the Lighthouse
And there I was, a trembling infant, wracked with grief, paranoia and the shivers
And there I was still yet, I was Methuselah and I forgot what made me so

If I have to be honest with you, frank and earnest, as vulnerable as I always am...
I forgot why I wrote this by the time it was completed
But that is not the only thing I've lost
I look in the mirror and I see an ocean, formless, unending, ceaseless, hurdling ever toward
Toward, toward, toward
What is your identity, oh great one of the waves?
Kyle Ray Smith  Oct 2016
Headache
Kyle Ray Smith Oct 2016
It was all a blur...the day I met you
A headache of which 200 MG of Ibuprofen would not satisfy
You might as well have cut my forehead open and questioned if its contents were love or lust
I didn’t know
I had a headache

Oh it was a doozy
Whew Whew Whew
Thoughts whizzed around my head in zip a dee doo das
Fugazi's of  Love or Lust
I don’t know
I have a headache
Anais Mostly  Jan 2014
You and me
Anais Mostly Jan 2014
Secrets we share
Because we like the Cohen brothers
Love Torchys tacos
Because people gossip but don't care

When your mom dies I'll help you clean her house
I'll drop everything and come down to be with you

I'd leave  my life now but then I'd have no stories to tell you

Remember in the summer when we would steal swims in random apartment complex pools

Texas sunsets
Bright and fading
Just like you and me

We had to skip town again

All these courses for you in  grad school
All these cities for me to rethink

Sometimes I'm fatigued and my mind and heart can't settle on a single person or thing

Palpable memories
Remember getting high and listening to fugazi
Just like you and me
Vii HunniD  Mar 2017
Shish...
Vii HunniD Mar 2017
This is that remarkable shish,
Extra ordinary type of writing,
That makes me feel some type away,
With my thoughts, solitary.

Befuddled by my own mindset conspiracy
Contradicting predicaments.
No Coachella for me,
My thoughts on parole,
Lost in a pandemonium with pious fiends
Blunted thinking of the known, unknown,
Unknown of the known, unknowns.
Things that we know we don't really know about.
At that time I felt like somebody chose me,
Feeling amorphous as a "POET"should be.

As it is written,
I am gifted,
I know it's fugazi
Come learn something...

— The End —