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The shopping channel calls to me
It wakes me up at night
To sell me things I do not need
Nor would buy, if I was right
But apparently, there's something wrong
My brain should be re-wired
I only purchase things on here
When I am really over-tired
I have a room specifically
For things bought on TV
I've ginsu knives and shredding blades
And juicers!!!...ninety three!!
For some reason the kitchen things
Just seem to catch my eye
Especially at three a.m.
That's the time I need to buy
I've magic bullets by the score
Processors,  I don't need
But, if I ever put them all to use...
An army I could feed
I've got socks for diabetics
Things to make your ******* stand out
I've got exercise machines galore
I've got three things that help gout!
My credit card's at the limit
I know the numbers off by heart
The post man knows me by my name
I even have my own **** cart
To deliver all my purchases
They just load it and deliver
It almost comes here by itself
It's enough to make one shiver
I don't know how it started
I think the countdown clock...ah, yes
I thought it meant the game was ending
I phoned in and bought a dress!!!
I've got jewellery by Joan Rivers
George Foreman grills...they fill my den
I've got perfumes for the women
And lots of things that make you men!
My wife cannot contain me
She's sent me off to get some aid
But, if they sell it on the telly
I'll buy it sure as getting laid
I've bedazzled all my clothing
I eat dried fruit and jerky too
I get Christmas cards from Ronco
I'm a shopping ****** through and through
Each month we have a garage sale
I sell off some of what I've bought
But, then I go and buy it back again
Without a second thought
My friends have all but left me
I rarely go out of the house
I just sit here and go shopping
I don't even see my spouse
Set it and Forget it
That's a phrase I love to say
But wait, there's more...is another one
That helps me through the day
I used the last one on my wife
One night while having ***
She told me "Set it and Forget It"
I'm off to dreamland Tex!!
My shopping's an addiction
One I hope to beat some day
But now, the operator says...
I have to get my card and pay!
SG Holter Jul 2014
His Down's Syndrome makes
His age a tough guess, I'll
Say eight to ten.

Wide eyes on machines,
Ice cream dripping on the
Pavement outside the

Construction site.
I wanna work like this when
I grow up,
he says in

Young enthusiasm to a mother
Whose eyes well up with
Gratitude when I approach

And kneel down in front of
Him. So you want a job,
Buddy?
I ask him with a

Wink. He suddenly remembers
His ice cream and bites into
It shyly. Nods, glancing at the

Tools in my belt, the scratches
On my arms, the brick wall
I've been attacking with a

Wacker jackhammer. Nods
Again. Well, I'll see you in a
Few years,
I say with another

Wink, this time to his mother,
Who'd look her young age if
Her eyes weren't as tired,

But you can start with this
And get some practice.
I hand
Him my Stanley Fat Max

Hammer. His ice cream
Hits the ground as he
Recieves it with both hands,

Looking to his mother for
Confirmation that it's ok.
Oh, it is. She mouths a

Thank you SO much...
They walk away, his chatter
High pitched and fading

Around the corner. And I
Head over to the foreman to
Report that I lost my hammer.

Don't ever employ me.
I can work a good game, but
I'm too soft around little heroes.
John F McCullagh Nov 2011
When my father was a boy,
in the County of Tyrone,
His father owned a quarry
and he worked the fields of stone.

My Dad grew lean and hard
As he excavated stone
Yielding granite for stone carvers
And gravel aggregate for roads.

His hands grew strong and powerful
He had a muscular physique
He couldn’t read or write
But no one dared to call him weak.

When my Dad was in his twenties
He was working in the mines
Excavating British coal
at Newcastle on  Tynes.

Later on in life
He was living in the “States”
Working in landscaping
on large Gold Coast estates.

When my Dad was in his fifties
He was digging graves by hand.
Once again in Fields of stone
a hard working Union man.

Each morning he’d rise early
And walk two miles to work
He never had an office
And he’d never be a clerk.

He rose to be a foreman
Working in that field of stone
And when darkness overtook him
It became his earthly home.

Now when I go visit him
I kneel and pray alone
Beside his Celtic Cross
standing in the field of stones.
There, in the corner, staring at his drink.
The cap juts like a gantry's crossbeam,
Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw.
Speech is clamped in the lips' vice.

That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic-
Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again;
The only Roman collar he tolerates
Smiles all round his sleek pint of porter.

Mosaic imperatives bang home like rivets;
God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.
A factory horn will blare the Resurrection.

He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross,
Clearly used to silence and an armchair:
Tonight the wife and children will be quiet
At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
Steven Hutchison Apr 2012
On April 26th, 372 B.C. Plato was the first man to inflict injury upon his own dreams.
Not the forms casting shadows in his cave, his literal dreams.
At 6:35 a.m. the impish snarl of a water ***** crept into his Utopia of an
all-you-can-eat gyro cart overturned at the corner of his street and roused him
back to consciousness. The ingenious design of his Clepsydra quite obviously complete,
Aristotle came running with the awkward stride of a sleepwalking adolescent
to see what his master had done. When he arrived he saw flying,
two pots of water, an air-compressing submersible chamber and one water ***** reed.
Aristotle quickly collected the shattered pieces and noted
that this broken pottery was more real than time itself.

On September 21st, 712 A.D. a small village just outside the boundaries of
Chang'an, China came dangerously close to taking the life of the palace
astronomer/inventor/sleepyhead. Crowding around the door of Yi Xing, the
townspeople tore their robes and wailed for him to put a stop to the
incessant clanging. Xing, who had apparently overslept and was still
clinging to morsels of fading dreams about his young mistress, stuffed his
face into his pillow, muttering eureka, after first having chucked the
two clay pots, handful of stones and plate-sized gong out the front door,
much to the amusement of the assembly of drooping eyelids and torn pajamas.

In the year 1235 A.D. tortured residents of Baghdad began associating their
daily and nightly times for prayer with the ringing of their eardrums from
uninvited chimes.

In 1493 St. Mark's Clock-tower polluted the once-pure Venetian air with
hourly reminders that we are all yet one hour closer to our inevitable death
and the priests of the day called it humility.

Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire turned to a pine cabinet, brass clock and
mechanical gears in 1787, and for the first time gave himself the ability to
choose when he would hate the morning.

In 1847, French inventor Antoine Redier began making money off of people's
early morning auditory masochism.

Lew Wallace, the morning after completing his masterpiece novel "Ben Hur,"
awoke with a fiendish beeping in his ear and proceeded to invent the paradox
of the snooze button.

In Spring of 1942 the war in Europe raged and all U.S. alarm clock production ceased.

In the Spring of 1943 well-rested factory men, confronted by their foreman
upon arrival at 9:15, erupted the words "my alarm clock is broken,"
forever placing the excuse in the deep pockets of slackers
world-wide.

To all of these respected men of our history
Who have thought with their hands to create
The foundation of a society drowning in Starbucks,
I wish to express my sincerest ingratitude.

I lie awake in bed at night,
Licking the bitter taste of reality from my cheeks,
In the company of Plato, Lew Wallace and Yi Xing,
Wondering what dreams will be stolen from me.
Day 20
ioan pearce Mar 2010
befriended by the builders
a building site next door
they gave her little jobs to do
although she's only four

when friday came,they even gave
her wages for the week
foreman smiled at sophie's joy
and tweaked her rosie cheek

off she went, to spend her pay
there was no way of stopping
a working girl with hard earned cash
so mummy took her shopping

hello mr  sweetshop man
i've got cash to spend
been grafting with my muckers
an real job,....not pretend

are you working monday?
he passed her pick and mix
aye! if those  wankers from jewson
bring the ******* bricks
Odeleye Emmanuel Jun 2015
In a world where myths were made real, there lived a king who had the terific ability to turn any thing he made contact with into pure gold. First this strange abilty often called the midals touch made the king so rich, so that he became the richest in the entire realm. But there was something missing, it was the ability to feel and touch affectionately. Soon this young king's eyes fell on Shauna; who was the daughter of a commoner in a near by town. She was the prettiest thing he had seen in the whole world, when she smiled it shined like the sun and even when she frowned, it was like the splendor of the full moon garnished with the stars. What such raw beauty.
The king Mica soon couldn't sleep; he had laid his eyes on his dream queen.  But there was a problem, a sweet bitter problem, a problem that first was a blessing, a problem that had given him all the riches he couldn't have acquired normally.  He then realized that not all blessings were not totally blessings but they were like a sweet bitter candy. Which when tasted has a sweet taste but before long turns bitter. But all the same he couldn't sleep and when the king can't sleep all those in the palace would not sleep.
before long he called for his Wisemen, three of them showned up in a flash bowing on their kneels.
'' what is it that disturbs your majesty'' , the Wiseman in the centre said avoiding eye contact.
King Mica signed and silence lingered.
'' we are the most Wisemen in the entire realm nothing is beyond our wealth of knowledge'' another proclaimed.
The king then turned to the one that hadn't altered a word as if waiting for his own speech. '' our ears are open to listen your majesty'', the last one said.
  "which one of you has the power to left this cause off my neck", the king said.
" my lord which cause do you speak of " one of the Wisemen replied.
"None sence!" the king shouted in anger as he rose from his royal throne.
The whole palace trembled at the sound of the king's thunderous voice. The Wisemen fell back at the rage of the king.
"All my life I thought that this was a blessing from the gods little did I know that it would soon turn soar." king mica said letting his emotions in.
The men was stunned with fear, they had not seen the king in this light before. There was really a matter that must have lead to this.
"but your majesty is the wealthest in the entire realm what does thou seekest which had not in thy possession already" the man to the extreme right gently said.
The king's rage surged as though the Wisemen words were anger catalyst. " you ( he pointed in the direction of the one that spoke last) dare say that I have all I have ever desired?  Look at the palace all gold, look at my throne, GOLD!, my vessels made of gold, no doubt I am the wealthest but take a long hard look at me, look at my hands convered with gloves." he walked forward towards the Wiseman that spoke last.  The man trembled at the manner of approach of the king. He took a step backwards.
" anything that I touch suddenly turns into gold and am very sure that you should know what that means." king Mica said as he slowly removed the hand gloves on his right arm.
"I need the ability to touch, the ability to feel like any one else." now the king was right in front of the frightened man. " I am very certain you understand what I mean."he lifted his bare hand to the face of the short man in front of him.  The Wiseman knew what was about to occured but there was nothing he could do. He knew that every time the king gets angry, a new possession is added to his libary of great golden artifacts and right now he would become the new arrival to the king's collection.  But he had to try to stay alive.
" but oh king we are here to hel....." the king interrupted him by lifting his bare finger to the Wiseman's foreman about a centimeter away.
" m.....y lord..... " the man altered in fright.but he slowly noticed that he was freezing, he was  turning into gold. The king's finger had made contact with the man's forehead.
" Ahhhhhrgggg........."   he shouted in vain it was already too late. The others immediately fell with their faces towards the ground and worshipped the king in sore fear.
The king turned towards his throne leaving a new golden possession behind.  
" I have falling in love with someone but with this cause that would not be possible unless both of you come up with a way to lift this from me"
Silence filled the golden chamber where they were.
"ANSWER ME!!!", the king rised his voice.
Then one answered," we will definitely come up with something but your majesty must give some time"
" what time! Allow me to make my self clear enough,I need a reply and I need it in the next twenty four hours from now." he said politely
" and if you can't provide me a viable solution to this, both of you will no doubt meet your colleague in hades."
The king sat and dismissed the men kneeling in his presence.they hastily fled from his presence like shafts in the wind. He very well knew that the chances of being normal again was very slim. But what had to done had to be done. He would try all that was in his reach to attain his goals which was to marry Shauna, his dream queen. In few hours he would know his fate and he knew this.
This is a work in progress. Please let me know what you think about it.
ioan pearce Mar 2010
sneaky stan, the builder man,
who laboured on the site
wheeled a barrow full of straw
for two weeks every night

foreman feared some pilfering
and  searched it every day
he fumbled round, but always  found
now't below the hay.

but sneaky stan, a gardening man,
unhappy with wage rates
had stolen fourteen wheel barrows
and sold em to his mates
Cecil Miller Jan 2016
I've borne the heavy load.
I've worked all the day.
Got two children at the house to feed.
Husband's gone away.

I've a bunion on my toe,
But I've got a corn pad.
With a smile upon my face,
Swear, it don't hurt so bad.

Don't the moonlight look so grand,
Shining in the sky!
Walking home from second shift,
Clean cars are wizzing by.

There's a light mist in the air
That gives me some relief.
In the crock *** waits at home
Hash and good corned beef.

My fingers gnarl and seize,
The handle's hard to grip.
I hope the boss don't send me home.
The kids have a field trip.

When the kids get on the bus
To travel out of town,
I might take a few days off
To lay my tired head down.

Don't the moonlight look so grand,
Shining in the sky.
Walking home from second shift,
Clean cars are wizzing by.

There's a light mist in the air
That gives me some relief.
In the crock *** waits at home
Hash and good corned beef.

I am faithful to the work.
I don't call in sick.
I'm hardworking as a man.
The foreman calls me "chick."

I never complain about my back.
Lord, He knows, I need this job.
I can take the stripes they give.
Don't give my raise to Bob.

Don't the moonlight look so grand,
Shining in the sky.
Walking home from second shift,
Clean cars are wizzing by.

There's a light mist in the air
That gives me some relief.
In the crock *** waits at home
Hash and good corned beef.
This is one of my folk songs.
I wrote it this afternoon in about 15 minutes on the notepad of my phone.
I went to copy and paste and deleted it and had to quickly type it in again while it was still fresh in my mind.
I wrote it from the perspective of a single mother as an empathetic homage. I hope I did justice to single mothers everywhere.
12:24am p.s. The title was hash of good corned beef but I remembered we southern folk used to call it corned beef AND hash sometimes, instead of corned beef hash. Anyway, just now I modified the title to include the conjunction AND, replacing the former OF.
I , Frank Wilson , would be lawyer , represent myself in this attack upon my honor ! For I am a studious , God fearing man ! I bow before no Judge , Lawyer or Constable ! Your court dwells beneath moral turpitude , a jury of my peers will soon know the truth !
I do not recognize that woman and child , I'll not pay the stipend your foreman has read out loud ! Your verdict means little in my hardened eyes , one that I refuse to recognize !
Bailiff ! Send for the State Patrol , summon the officer before this Court ! Take this man directly to jail ! I want him in Reidsville by five p.m. !
Copyright October 5 , 2015 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
"Don't be
disgruntled."

He said to the foreman.

"So what if the building
is going to be late."

"Often buildings
are late and they
don't have any offspring."
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
In God We Trust, For He Invented Reasonable Doubt




In Courtroom of the State of New York, Part 62,
where the only decoration extant,
in gold leaf letters,
a magnificent joke,
In God We Trust.

Words so incongruous
to the real time drama,
a poorly acted Law and Order episode
of which I partake,
(as Juror No. 1,
ergo you may address me as
Mr. Jury Foreman),
they stun me into stupefaction
every time we enter and the
Bailiff pronounces with much gravitas,
"Jury Entering"

A potpourri of a dozen Manhattanites,
with wisdom acquired
by the singular virtue of
having attained the robust age of 18,  
noteworthy for being free of
criminal record,
having been nominated
to sit upon the jury that will decide
the fate of one Eric B.,
for what he may have done upon West 11th Street
one Summer night in
June Two Thousand and Eleven,

If adjudged guilty,
New York State can take,
incarcerate him for up to
15 years of his life

Predicate felon by the age of twenty seven,
Eric's resume consists of
four felonies,
two misdemeanors
a wife and two little children,
and a partridge in a pear tree.

Facts turgid and muddy,
Eric tells a story
one juror calls a confection of lies,
no one murmurs
much disagreement in the
tiny, overheated room
we have been sequestered to
replay
the 2012 version of
Twelve Angry Men.

But I am not his peer,
nor am I a seer,
common sense says
if appearances are what they seem to be,
he aided and abetted
in the forcible taking of
a nice Connecticut lady's cell phone
with his brother who just happened to be
released from prison earlier that day

A convoluted tale
ripe with inanities is told,
upshot is our defendant's tale,
his robust defense,
portrays him as the unluckiest man
in the whole world,
a good Samaritan,
{chasing after the thief,
** **, his bro}

against whom events have conspired

In Manhattan can be a harsh place,
where the natives
a tough lot,
tougher than the Indians from whom
they stole it all.

Our bridges we sell to out-of-towers,
all it takes is one to say,
what the heck,
reasonable doubt is
a ***** to overcome
so let him go


Jan, 2012
SG Holter May 2014
I found -in the shadow of a
Crane rigged and ready- that
I couldn't help myself.

Took a ladder to the huge sphere
Of chipped and battered iron,  
And threw one leg on either
Side of the chain.

Sang leaning and rocking
Into the walkie talkie
As my foreman spat his
Coffee not to choke; laughing along
With Swedes, Polish, Lithuanians
And Norwegians alike.

Miley. Bringing people
Together.
PNasarudheen Jun 2013
Justice loves injustice
Doctor loves disease
Foreman  loves damages
Livelihood for  the sages.
I cry for justice bold ,sold
In deaf  ear for years old.
Justice or my lawyer ,unjust
Put off  hearing , file in dust.
Democracy or Bureaucracy
Suffocate in  ugly Autocracy.
Political labour;  unions cruel
Compel  the subjects   crawl.
Equality , freedom, justice
Sweet for poster slogans  
Pay and use  roads  lead us
Pitiably to the island Mess
Of  Fuss , hiss; kiss of miss
As frogs spring over   Bliss.
Connor Apr 2016
A) Sometime
     Somewhere
     Someone
                       ....                                (written by me on the guest log in Spartacus Books' public bathroom)

B) I am perceiving people perceiving people
and all at once, a bird flies overhead!

C) HYPER PIANO BOUNCES FROM THE SPRINGTIME PAVEMENT!! condominium instruments reach out like satellites to the soul for any who'll listen to it's song of a time before

D) Where I witnessed my own dejection, wandering in nightly streets cement-eyed and forlorn, I sought to escape this Western cavalcade with a solitary year in Vietnam which didn't become anything more than an idea, but this was pushed under the rug for India (which is still on my mind!) which was then replaced by the thought of living in Bathurst, NSW, AUS (I'll get to why in a poem or other format of writing in times to come) I have named the place I once saw thru a vivid dream or a crystal ball which to some may mean the same thing

E) "DUCK! AND COVER!" we've all seen that cold war propaganda film with the turtle, seems so ridiculous now, wouldn't have worked anyways

F) Kripaya ek glass paani dijye (this means "please, give me a glass of water" in Hindi, which could be a valuable sentence to know considering India can get very hot, but when you remember how unhealthy their ((at least unfiltered)) water is, I may never use this)

G) I don't know which is crazier, those who feigned insanity to avoid war, or war itself

H) George Foreman named all his kids George Foreman (what a ******* egomaniac) I would grill him on that if I ever met him because seriously what a weird decision, how their mother was okay with that  is beyond my understanding.

I) Here comes July, with it's sweating mobs and many humid funerals

J) Poetic visual aestheticism (in terms of the actual layout line to line)

As one line
drops into
another line and
keeps dropping.

(determined by what Ginsberg called Mind Breaths, given to phrase being written, drop line to add emphasis to words of higher importance or topic phrases, as to almost introduce them in a way not blended with the previous line)

I) O! birds, who are up at the early hours of the morning, I am beyond glad/grateful that I can hear your hymns before everyone else has woken up

J) I think Vonnegut had something unique going on in Breakfast of Champions, especially that bit with the illustrated ******* that looked more like an asterisk

K) The trees outside are green again..
     The Windex bottle above the toilet is green,
     My sheets are green,
     This color I associate with the word "APRIL" is green

     There's a faint glimpse of green in my eyes,
     And a hint of green in the garden nearby,
     A lot of green in this poem (?) which may not be considered a poem but ******* if you happened to think that!
      
      Lastly, for now, I'm no longer feeling blue, and I guess that's a little green, too.

L) is for LOSER

M) ..did Joe Brainard just write a Colgate advertisement in the middle of his work? What is this I didn't pay for commercials..I don't WANT advertising present in my books! I see them everywhere else!
ah...

O) is for open mouth

P) Spontaneous prose acting as an honest/direct look into the meditated (or pure) form state of thought of that who wrote the prose. The book itself being a literal time capsule for a moment of consciousness who's creator may now be deceased.
Also
those who have their thoughts, images, ideas in their head > transferred to U who is now sharing those images but in a subjective way, seeing the settings or characters differently > person then writes their OWN ideas inspired from the previous writers = collaborative consciousness (also a form of time travel)

Q) is for questioning the rigidity of the political structures around you and the flaws it presents for the working class

R) is for RSVPing yes at the wedding between your hypothetical best friend now with the person you've been in love with for years. Slowly it kills you inside, this point of no return, something out of a grand and tragic love story (which isn't a love story because the love was not between you and that person but rather your hypothetical best friend) ****! you slam your fist to the table or the wall and it's all hopeless. But then comes the acceptance of the situation, moving on from it the best you can even if it presents itself as a shadow from this point on. If you've ever been thru something like this I deeply apologize as the cruelty of the world is indecisive, I for one haven't, but I am only turning 20 this year, which would also explain why I made this whole scenario mentioned above hypothetical

S) is for SHHH!

T) is for the constant presence of televisions in today's homes

U) is for UNIVERSE

V) is for...

W) is for upside-down M

X) is for xeroxing you slowly rolling up your ******* and mailing the series of pages to your ex (if you're an *******, which people also xerox maybe)

Y) is for why and also where when what who and how

Z) is for ZZZZZZZzzzz
zzzzz
zzzz
zzz
z
I sit on my **** by the fireside chair
and talk the mill talk to the calender man
but he doesn't care
he just watches his gauges and pressures
how precious he is
to the factory owner who allows him to live
on a pittance each week.

And while he clothes the World
in his mind he would seek
a botany bay
where his ancestors lay
and put roots in that ground.
The sound of the press, blocks the sound from the bell
just as well
because that ringing in his ears is not the bite from the future
but the teeth in the fears of his past
and another bolt of cloth has been passed by the foreman
and ticked off the list that he keeps in a book
to read to the crook who works in accounting
and pushed to the double entry
in another book amounting to
daylight robbery
but the snobbery of the age is another page set
in the mill town you get
****** all.

The fine hall's for the Master and all you survey
are the ruins that lie in the ruins of another day.

Get away
to get away and walk through a gateway into a better day
but the Devil you know is the Devil you pay and what would he say
if you jacked in the mill
and worked down the mines
better times indeed?
Vernon Waring Jul 2015
that's him...
squinty eyes, maybe
thirty or so,
trim, fit, hair
combed neatly,
parted just right

mister
congeniality
with a real estate
license, he's a
trifle flirty
but he seems
proud of his
pretty wife and
two kids - plus one
in the oven - the
family ensconced
in a new rancher
in the east falls
section of town

never served
on a jury before,
doesn't want to be
foreman or assistant
foreman, just wants to
absorb the experience,
to fulfill his civic
duty, to serve,
just wants to lean back
in the deliberation room
and listen and learn

on the lunch break,
he talks basketball,
coaching a swim team,
obsessing about his days
in a garage band,
some think he's a little
young to be so nostalgic
but those shifty eyes -
a faded blue like the sea
captured in an aged
watercolor - and
that fast fading smile
reveal something else,
something nameless...
malevolent maybe?
a few wonder
what he's really
all about

juror number eight
whispers to number
six that twelve's
a ringer,
the one who screws
things up, the one who
plays reasonable doubt
tricks right before your
eyes like a smooth magician,
he's the one with the chip
cemented firmly on his
shoulder, he's in this
for the sport,
the mind games,
the unfolding drama

number twelve
spells it out
for everyone:
the cops always lie,
why believe anything
they say? and don't
believe that guy with
the new york accent
who had clearly
tampered with evidence
and tried to cover it up
...and then there's the
defendant's best
friend who sold him
down the river, sold
him out right there
on the stand! don't be
sheep, don't trust
flimsy reasoning, this
whole justice system reeks
of injustice, look at
what they think of
teenagers, parading them
around in the hallways
here in the courthouse...
young kids handcuffed,
walking around in
leg chains, they're
victimized too in
their own way, what about
their rights? think about
it! i said think about it!

juror number eight had to
be restrained from choking
him right there in the
middle of deliberations,
they almost called the
guards in to break things
up, the men and women
confused, terrified

he's become the
belligerent bully
who says no while the
others say yes, the only
voice that goes against
the other eleven, but he's
not a champion, not a
noble iconoclast, not
one of the twelve
angry men,
just one angry man
against the world,
the contrarian with
a hidden agenda,
the wild card,
maverick,
odd man out

he's juror number
twelve, he lives to
explode the case,
be the juror
who hung the jury,
eleven men and women
dangling in the
town square, sunlight
streaming down,
heads swollen,
mouths agape,
eyes wide open,
the last minute
of the last act
Raylene Lu Mar 2017
Okay.

You used to be a *****.

Now don’t get self conscious. We all used to be *****. Check out the period at the end of this sentence. That tiny little dot is around 600 microns wide. When you were a ***** you were about 40 microns wide. And you were so cute back then too with your little tail wagging all over the place and your love of swimming. Boy could you swim. In fact if you hadn’t outswum your siblings, you might be a slightly different version of yourself right now. Maybe you’d have a higher-pitched laugh, hairier arms, or stand two inches shorter.

You had a great life as a ***** but always felt incomplete. The truth is you weren’t whole until you met an egg. And then you two began a nine month project to make a cool new version of you. It took a while but you grew arms and legs and eyeballs and lungs. You grew nerves and nails and eardrums and tongues.

For a ***** to meet an egg it means your mom met your dad. But it’s not just them. Think about how many people had to meet, fall in love, and make love for you to be here.

Here’s the answer: A lot. Like a lot a lot.

Before they had you, none of your ancestors drowned in a pond, got strangled by a python, or skied into a tree. None of your ancestors choked on a peach pit, were trampled by buffalo, or got their tie stuck in an assembly line.

None of your ancestors was a ******.

You are the most modern, brightest spark of years and years and years of survivors who all had to meet each other in order to eventually make you.

Your nineteenth century Grandma met your nineteenth century Grandpa down at the candle-making shoppe. She liked his muttonchops and he thought she looked cute churning butter.

Your Middle Ages Grandpa met your Middle Ages Grandma while they both poured hot oil from the castle turrets on pillaging vikings. She liked his grunts and he thought the flowers in her hair made her heaving bosoms jump out.
Your Ice Age Grandpa crossing the Bering Bridge in a woolly mammoth fur met your Ice Age Grandma dragging a club in the opposite direction. He liked her saber-tooth necklace and she dug his unibrow.

Your ancient rainforest Grandpa was picking berries naked in the bush while your ancient rainforest Grandma was spearing dodos for dinner. She liked his jungle funk and he liked her cave drawings. If it wasn’t for the picnic they had afterwards, maybe you wouldn’t be here.

You’re pretty lucky all those people met, fell in love, made love, had babies, and raised them into other people who did it all over again. This happened over and over and over again for you to be here. Look around the plane, coffee shop, or park right now. Look at your husband snoring in bed, your girlfriend watching TV, or your sister playing in the backyard. You are surrounded by lucky people. They are all the result of long lines of survivors.

So you’re a survivor, too. You’re the latest and greatest. You’re the top of the line. You’re the very best nature has to offer.

But a lot had to happen before all your strong, fiery ancestors met each other and fell in love over and over again for hundreds of thousands of years …

So let’s stop for a second and pull back again. Let’s pull way, way, way, way back.

Okay.

Let’s go on a field trip. Put your shoes on because we’re heading outside.

Take a bowling ball and drop it on the edge of your driveway. That’s our Sun. Yeah, the ball is only eight inches across and the actual Sun is eight hundred thousand miles across but that’s our scale for this little brainwave. Okay, now walk down your street ten big paces and drop a grain of salt on your neighbor’s lawn. That’s Mercury. Take nine more paces down the street and drop a peppercorn for Venus. And then take another seven paces, so you’re now two or three houses down the block, and toss down another peppercorn.

You got it.

That peppercorn is Earth.

Here we are, basking in the blazing sun, twenty-six big steps away from the bowling ball. Our giant planet is just a tiny speck in the middle of nowhere but here’s the crazy part: It gets a whole lot bigger.

If you keep walking, Mars is only couple more houses away, but Jupiter ends up ninety-five big paces down the street, out of the neighborhood, and halfway to the corner store. By now a dog is probably slobbering in the bowling ball finger holes and kids are flying by you on their bikes, slurping drippy popsicles, and wondering what’s up with this nut tossing crumbs on the sidewalk, acting out some demented suburban version of Hansel and Gretel.

If you want to finish up our solar system, you’re going to have to start taking two- and three-hundred paces for the remaining planets, eventually dropping a grain of salt for Pluto half a mile away from the bowling ball. You can’t see the bowling ball with binoculars and it’s getting cold out for your long walk home.

But here’s the crazier part: That’s just our solar system. That’s just our bunch of rocks flying around our big bright bowling ball star.

Turns out our big bright star and all its salt and peppercorns are racing around a cosmic race track with two hundred billion other big bright bowling ball stars. You’d have to cover the entire Earth with bowling ***** eight thousand times to represent the number of stars in our race track. Did we mention this race track has a name? Yup, it’s called the Milky Way galaxy, presumably because the scientists who first noticed it were all eating delicious Milky Way candy bars late that Friday night down at the telescopes.

So basically our bowling ball, salt, and peppercorns are flying in the fast lane around a ridiculously giant race track galaxy called the Milky Way with billions and billions of other bowling *****, salt grains, and peppercorns, too.

But are you ready for the craziest part: That’s just our galaxy. Guess how many giant racetrack galaxies are in all of outer space? Oh, not many. Just more than we can possibly count. Honestly, nobody knows how many galaxies are out there in the big blackness. All we know is that every few years somebody stares out a little further and finds millions more of them just shining way out in the void. We don’t know how deep it goes because our rocket ships don’t blast off that far and our thickest, fattest telescopes can’t see that far.

Now, all this space talk might make us feel small and insignificant, but here’s the thing, here’s the big thing, here’s the biggest thing of all: Of the millions of places we’ve ever seen it appears as though Earth is the only place that can support life. The only place! Oh sure, there could be other life-giving planets we haven’t seen yet, but the point is that Earth could easily have been a clump of sulphur gas, be lying in darkness forever, or have a winter that dips a couple hundred degrees and lasts twenty years like Uranus.

On this planet Earth, the only one in the giant dark blackness where anything can live, we ended up being humans.

Congratulations, us!

We are the only species on the only life-giving rock capable of love and magic, architecture and agriculture, jewellery and democracy, aeroplanes and highway lanes. We’re the only ones with interior design and horoscope signs, fashion magazines and house party scenes, horror flicks with monsters, guitar jams at concerts. We got books, buffets and radio waves, wedding brides and roller coaster rides, clean sheets and good movie seats, bakery air and rain hair, bubble wrap and illegal naps.

We got all that. But people, listen up.

We only get a hundred years to enjoy it.

I’m sorry but it’s true.

Every single person you know will be dead in a hundred years — the foreman at your plant, the cashiers at your grocery store, every teacher you’ve ever had, anyone you’ve ever woken up beside, all the kids on your street, every baby you’ve ever held, every bride who’s walked down the aisle, every telemarketer who’s called you at dinner, every politician in every country, every actor in every movie, everyone who’s cut you off on the highway, everyone in the room you’re sitting in right now, everyone you love, and you.

Life is so great that we only get a tiny moment to enjoy everything we see. And that moment is right now. And that moment is counting down. And that moment is always, always fleeting.

You will never be as young as you are right now.

So whether you’re enjoying your first toothpicked turkey cold cuts and marveling at apples from South Africa, dreaming of strange and distant relatives from thousands of years ago, or staring into the blackness of deep, deep space, just remember how lucky we all are to be here right now.

If you feel that sense of wonder and beauty in all the tiny joys in life then you’re part of an international band of old souls and optimists, smiling on sidewalks, dancing at weddings, and flipping to the other side of the pillow. Let’s all high five and keep thinking wild thoughts, dreaming big dreams, and laughing loud laughs.

Thank you so much for reading this.

And thank you for being

AWESOME!
I DO NOT OWN THIS IT BELONGS TO NEIL PASRICHA. He is awesome I just wanted to share this from his blog :D http://1000awesomethings.com/
My whole insides curl
As I lock eyes on her face,
See her fear - her panicked breathing,
Her shaking head.
I reach forward for her
But cringe back in myself
Separate mind from body
As I touch her hair
My snarl is not mine,
Nor the words -
Such bitterness is scripted
And crushing to say,
To play this part twists my soul
Into the shape
Of what broke me first.
Old Jim

"I'm grateful for the company

....sit down and I'll make tea"

"It's not often people visit

but, with the cat, us two make three"

He's hiding somewhere here

He's always there abouts

I just have to watch the doorway

I don't want him to get out

We listen to the radio

Can't afford to have TV

It's really not a loss though

Since I now can barely see

Time it takes it toll on you

A little more each day

I wish there was a little pill out there

That helped keep time at bay"

"There's the kettle, whistling"

I'll be back with our fresh brew

The cat won't drink it with me

So I'm only making two

I looked around the little room

All the drapes were closed up tight

It was sunny out and midday

But inside, it looked like night

There was one light in the corner

More for guests than Uncle Jim

HIs life was based on order

This room just wasn't him

"Here's the brew my boy" he said

"As he came back and sat with me

I watched him...two steps forward

One left,  then forward three"

He put the cups down gently

Didn't spill a single drop

He'd memorized his pathway

He knew exactly where to stop

"I've got biscuits, if you'd like"

"Some Hob Nobs from back home"

"I break them out for company

"They're too good for me alone"

I said that I would get them

and I exited my chair

He said they're up on top

But I'd never reach them there"

He came and got a grab stick

He poked and grabbed them from the shelf

He said "This things a lifesend"

"I'd never get them by myself"

We sat and talked for hours

Talked of sports and music too

He said that with his failing eyesight

There's really not much he could do

"It's saved me money someways"

"And cost  more in others though"

"But now that I'm not driving"

"I no longer shovel snow"

Jim, worked hard for forty years

He was a foreman in the mine

He'd been working round the coal for years

In fact since he was nine

He used to run small errands

From the office to the men

He lied about his age though

Jim told them he was ten

He'd retired back five years ago

When it got hard to breathe

"It was all I ever knew boy"

"I didn't want to leave"

Tons and Tons of coal dust

Must have filtered through his lungs

He was  dying slowly daily,

It started showing on his tongue

Small spots appeared which spread real quick

He started treatment right away

He knew the doctor would relieve him

Of his job, reduce his pay

"you know boy, there's a tale they tell"

"of birds down in the mine"

"when the birds fall off the perch stone dead

"Then we men have little time"

"We have to get out quickly

"For the bird has shown our fate

"But think a bit, the gas got him...

"So for us ...it was too late"

"We didn't really watch the bird

"We listened for his song

"For when his voice was laboured"

We knew it wasn't long"

"Dead birds...they meant dead miners"

At this my body jolted

"It;s like shutting up the old barn door"

"Even though the horse has bolted"

I finished up and said to Jim

I had to catch my bus

Jim said, "ok young man, be on your way"

" Now, it's just the two of us"

"You'll be back soon, I hope" he said

I said , "I sure will try"

"I like our little visits"

As he sat there and he sighed

"Just me and Tilly now" he said

As he saw me to the door

Stay safe my boy and oh....

He said "There's one thing more

"when you get on home...please phone me"

"It will make this old heart sing"

"Just phone me up and when you do...

"Let it go for just three rings"

I said I would, "but why three rings"

I asked, not four or five

"Three rings" he said's our signal

"In the mine....that you're alive"

I left and headed homeward

But first I'd stop of at the mall

Then I went home right directly

And I then gave Old  Jim his  call.
Alexander K  Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


Sembene  Ouasmane the son of a fisherman
the son of wolof tribesmen the owners of Atlantic
you are a bad liar, my kinsman and foreman
why didn't you wait for me to grow  up
you only belied to me for your to die earlier
i begged for your pipe for i also to **** it with passion
you told me to hold on until i grow up
only for you to accede to July death in 2007
i am tortured in this life  without  without you
agonized by daily chores without a glance at the fume of smokes
being blown from the magnificent ceramic pipe on your mouth,
i wanted you teach me what Maxim Gorky and Emile Zola taught you
i wanted to learn from you what you learned at the Moscow cinema school
was it cinematographic Marxism or filmographic socialism that you learned?
i wanted to get you alive so that we can sing together the songs of Cedo and Xala,
why were your gods collecting the pieces of wood; was it humility and humanism?
I wanted to see the powerful words of human side of governance
coming from you sober gentle mouth onto African plateau
that is replete with commonaplace selfish power struggles,
i will build a monument in respect of your service to African literature
and your service to protection of humanity;both Arabic and African
your service to humanity as you forgave a French woman who stole your book
only to publish it under her name in a dint of ****** wham pam pams.
Terry Collett Apr 2013
You entered the single
factory door
into a noisy
and busy shop floor

with a guy called Brian
who was older than you
and had a worn
and worried expression

a foreman came
and asked Brian to go with him
and set him to some job
over the way

then he came to you
and said
what’s your name?
Collins

you said
right Colin
he said
follow me

and you were puzzled
why he had called you Colin
as you followed him
down the aisle

between machines
and people
he introduced you
to a middle aged dame

with glasses
who was short
and dumpy
there was another dame there

who was thinner
and a bit younger
who smiled
the plump dame

showed you around
her department
and set you to work
on a drilling machine

where you worked
most of the morning
then you had to go
to the work office

where a dame sat
you gave her the job sheet
how long were you
on the job?

she asked
about 6 inches
you said
she looked at you

a hint of a smile
on her lips
how long?
she repeated

how long what?
you asked
how long in time
were you on the job?

she said slowly
you said
3 hours it says here
mmmm

she said
you’re new aren’t you?
no
you replied

I’ve been around
for 21 years or so
she gazed at you
with her dark eyes

her lips were about to speak
but she nodded
then shut
the slide window

leaving you staring
at the window glass
you walked back
through the aisle

towards the plump dame
and her department
ready for the next job
before lunch

hoping it wasn’t
another drilling operation
but assembly
or cranking

or any other job
than drilling
thinking of the dame
in the office

and something
more thrilling.
Trevon Haywood Sep 2016
You will not break my spirit burning bright,
turn my day to terror'd night
you will not break my cities tall and proud,
run my family underground

you will not break me!

you will not rob my leaders of their will,
clergy of their faith,
you will not peel stripes from my face
poke holes through my stars

you will not get away with this!

you will not turn my red, white and blue
into painful black and blue,
you will not break my children's acrid innocence,
my freedom to endure,
you will not take my mother and hold her hostage,
break my back first man, 'cause I'll seek justice

I'm an American!

My colors do not run,
I'm black, white, brown, yellow and tan
I'm an American!
You broke into family's home
killed brothers and sisters
one day I will get you
because I'm an American!
and
you will not break me,
you will not break me,
you will not break the hope in my child's eyes
peace will prevail to your surprise,
love is strength in numbers,
your will is bound by hatred

America slumbers no more,
the giant has awaken and
years of complacent, fat-cat politics
is now down to ***** out heretics
I got *****
I got *****
I got ***** swinging from the hips of
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull
ready to bounce you out of your holes!

I got soul,
I got soul
I got soul like no others got soul,
got soul like Tina Turner, James Brown,
Ella Fitzgerald and the New York City Fire Department

I'm an American!

I got heart,
I got heart like no others got heart
I got heart like the Tin Man found
I got heart like Tony Bennett, George Foreman,
Marlon Brando, Jesse Owens,  BB King, John Belushi
Johnny Franco and the Miracle Mets!
I'm an American!
I'm an American!
and
you will not break me
you will not break me
you will not break me!

Frank Messina. 9/11/2016.
It's not just any kind of poem, the 9/11 poem
JAM Dec 2019
Down at the local bar, there are two chairs.  
In one is a man named Logus,
Who came from The Desert of Nine Valleys;
In the other is a song-less musician named Sparrow.

Day after day
Alone in the bar
The man with the foolish grin
Is keeping perfectly still.
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool.

He wandered very far,
Very far,
Over land and sea.
A little shy,
And sad of eye,
But very wise was he.
And then one day,
One magic day he looked Logus' way.
And while they spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to him:

“Good morrow to thee, brother prisoner!
Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize we're floating in space,
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry
And
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?”

Logus doesn’t want to bother with the bird,
”These are all lies
and jests.”

Sparrow retorts, “Still
A man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.
Now,
Drop your guard, you don't have to be smart all of the time.
I've got a mind full of blanks, I need to go somewhere new fast.
And don't be shy, oh no,
At least deliberately.

What was I saying?
Oh yeah.
Let me tell you a story that's sad but true,
About someone who just may remind you of you.
Let me tell you a tale that may help you awake a woozy head-
I'll buy you a drink
-It begins long ago on a happy day,
With a fool who was loved, but threw it all away,
Who exchanged a good home for a flophouse, a bar and a plank-“
Sparrow’s eyes begin to glisten--

Logus Interrupts,
“While we're on the subject,
Could we change the subject now?

My name is Logus,
I'm carrying the wheel.
Thanks for all you've shown us,
But this is how we feel.
Come sit next to me.
Pour yourself some tea.
Just like Grandma made,
When we couldn't find sleep.
Things were better then,
Once but never again.
We've all left the den
Let me tell you about it:

I am just a poor boy
Though my story's seldom told.
I have squandered my resistance,
for an existence
In which
Ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for
And why it is here,
It will instantly disappear
And be replaced by something even more bizarre
And inexplicable.”

Sparrow began stirring in his seat,
”You know, there is another theory which states
That this has already happened.
And you lived that,
In exchange for a pocket full of mumbles,
Such are promises."

Logus looks at him,
“And? I am still alive.”

Sparrow rolls his eyes,
“Geez, you know
Somebody once asked, "could I spare some change for gas?"
I need to get myself away from this place."
I said, "yep what a concept,
I could use a little fuel myself,
And we could all use a little change."
Too bad
A fake Jamaican took every last dime with that scam.
It was worth it just to learn some sleight of hand.
Bad news comes, don't you worry even when it lands,
Good news will work its way to all them plans.

But the building's not going as we planned.
The foreman has injured his hand.
The dozer will not clear a path.”

Logus scoffs,
“You talk in maths.
You buzz like a fridge.
You're like a detuned radio.”


Sparrow Laughs, “You'll never be what is in your heart.
Weep little lion man,
You're not as brave as you were at the start.
You have a heart that's full up like a landfill,
A job that slowly kills you,
And bruises that won't heal.
You look so tired, unhappy.
Such pretty houses,
And such pretty gardens:
Green plastic water-cans
For fake Chinese rubber plants
In the fake plastic earth.

There's an empty space inside our hearts
Where the weeds take root.
And now I'll set you free,
I'll set you free.”


They both left right on time,
The Sparrow accosted his mind.
The Sparrow said,
"Hey man, we go all the way"
Of course, they were willing to pay.
Back to the street,
Down to their feet.
Losing the feeling of feeling unique,
Do you know what I mean?

Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The bird of a thousand voices
Talking perfectly loud.
But I never heard him
Or the sound he appeared to make.
And he never seemed to notice.
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning 'round.
Of course, everyone goes crazy
Over such and such and such.
We made ourselves a pillar
We just used it as a crutch.
We were certainly uncertain
At least, I'm pretty sure I am.
Well, we didn't need the water
But we just built that, good *******.

For most have found both freedom and safety in their madness;
The freedom of loneliness
And the safety from being understood,
for those who understand us
Enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety.
Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
And Horses run fastest on the way home.

Logus and Sparrow had just that in mind,
and so, after deciding to take Sparrow’s ride, they left.
After dragging themselves into the car
Logus looked at Sparrow from the passenger seat,
“I keep myself in
To pull myself out.
I'm rising up,
Wish I was sinking down.
And it's not like
There was warning
We were happy.
And it's not like
There was mourning
In the warning.

I guess I am a scout.
So I should find a way out.
So everyone can find a way out.

I know I am a scout.
I should've found a way out.
So everyone can find a way out.

Sparrow starts his car, the ignition doesn’t turn at first,
It’s an older model so it takes a few tries.
Sparrow turns to Logus,
“Well, that is that and this is this.
Will you tell me what you saw and I'll tell you what you missed
when the ocean met the sky. (You missed, you missed)
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste the afterlife?

Drift all you like,
From ocean to ocean,
Search the whole world.

And you find your destination
With so many different places to call home.
'Cause when you find yourself a villain,
In the story you have written
It's plain to see
That sometimes the best intentions
Are in need of redemption.
Would you agree?
If so, please show me.

These thoughts and the strain you're under
Be a world child, form a circle
Before we all go under
And fade out again and fade out again

Logus starts groveling,
“Turn me on to phantoms,
I follow to the edge of the earth.
And fall off.
Everybody leaves
If they get the chance,
And this is my chance.

My shadow's shedding skin,
I've been picking scabs again,
I'm down, digging through
My old muscles, looking for a clue.

I've been crawling on my belly,
Clearing out what could've been,
I've been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I've been hiding.”

His eyes are the size of the moon,
He could 'cause he can so he does.
He’s feeling so good,
Just the way that he does
When it's nine in the afternoon.

Logus starts thinking to himself,
“So you think you're a Romeo?
Playing a part in a picture show?
Cause you're the joke of the neighborhood!
Why should you care if you're feeling good?
Take the long way home!
Take the long way home.

His phone starts ringing,
he clumsily pulls it from his pocket
and answers it.
It’s his wife, para.
She’s concerned,
“Hello? Hello? Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on now,
I hear you're feeling down
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I'll need some information first,
Just the basic facts,
Can you show me where it hurts?
Please don't
**** yourself for recognition.
**** yourself to never ever stop.
oh no!
You broke another mirror!
You're turning into something you are not.

Come home!
I'll bake you a cake
Made of all their eyes.
Do you see me
Dressed for the ****?”

Logus chuckles and thinks to himself,
“I know she's looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead.”

Their eyes are the size of the moon,
she could 'cause she can so she does.
They're feeling so good
Just the way that they do
When it's nine in the afternoon.

Para continues,
“But you'll still
**** yourself for recognition,
**** yourself to never ever stop.
You broke another mirror,
You're turning into something you are not.

And that's okay

I got a box full of all your pity.
We're fresh out of tissues
Because on them I wrote a comedy,
I wrote a comedy.

Logus looking down,
almost as if she’s there in front of him
to see how sad he feels,
“Sorry, but
I'll take a quiet life,
A handshake of carbon monoxide.

With no alarms and no surprises,
No alarms and no surprises,
No alarms and no surprises,
Silent, silent.

Tell me what to do!
Now the tank is dry.
Now, this wheel is flat.
And you know what else?
Guess what I received
In the mail today?
Words of deep concern
From my little brother:

Logus briefly thinks of a letter he received recently,
“Weep for yourself, my man,
You'll never be what is in your heart
Weep little lion man,
You're not as brave as you were at the start.
Rate yourself and rake yourself,
Take all the courage you have left
Wasted on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head,
you'll never settle any of your scores.

I backed my car into a cop car the other day.
Well, he just drove off - sometimes life's okay.
I ran my mouth off a bit too much, ah what did I say?

Well, you'll just laugh it off and it'll be okay.
it'll be okay.
Everybody needs a place to call their home.
Everybody needs someone to call their own.
Even when you're lonely, know you're not alone,
You're one of us.”

Logus' attention turns back to para.

Para begs,
“Please hold on hope, don't choke
On the noose around your neck
And find strength in pain
And change your ways
Know your name as it's called again.”

Logus sighs,
“Phew!
For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.

Sparrow,
Somewhere on the edge of the conversation,
Begins getting heavy eyed,
Shutting one then the other and then opening both
And says to himself, drifting into an irresistible
road hypnosis induced sleep,  

“And if you could be what you wanted,
If you could be who you wanted
All the time,
All the time.

And now I'll set you free,
I'll set you free…”
Before trailing off.
These quotes are taken from various songs and poems.
Josh Koepp Dec 2014
Here
I made a video right here to help you understand
Well i mean, you technically made the video...
I just uh...
Borrowed it?
I can see that you're...mad
But you know now right?
Please
Sit back down, you can wag your finger after
This is important

This is a video your child took of you mowing the lawn in 1994
Her big strong  parent, fumbling with this heavy-as-hell-is contraption
That sputters, and whirs, and kicks back
But like some superhero you...start to shove it along, and conquer the beast
And it sprays curiously alluring smog, that like a well behaved child, she knows not to breathe in,
Knows not to touch because she's not old enough
Or strong enough to pull that chord to trigger the bells and whistles
That she, nor i, nor probably you understands.

But i digress...

So here you are, with your child on the stoop, taking might i add some
Fine, stable footage you should really enroll her in some classes,
And you traveling around your suburban front yard, chasing away a squirrel with the lawnmower, harmlessly of course
And laughing with your daughter
Talking to your neighbors over the roaring engine,
Emptying the bag of fresh cut grass into the bin...

And that's where the battery died
No! Don't leave yet
I want you to watch again, listen again
Here...
Listen closely...








Did you hear the grass screaming of their judgement day, beneath the lovers kissing each other goodbye, wrapped around each other, as we hold hands, still entangled in  the mass graves you made for them

Beneath the ants cowering in their homes, begging their laborers to come back inside before they are noticed, before they are eviscerated and the foreman is forced to pay settlements

Beneath the subtle sound of your daughter breathing deeply of the sweet smelling gas that you told her to stay away from, that we learned to be repulsed by, that she has been told to be repulsed by

Beneath the...
Here, i'll rewind again
Here
You see the label on the lawnmower?
That manufacturer? That bar code? That order number? That factory? That steel purchase? That mine?
Did you hear the songs of the forced laborers there, the modern slaves that bear striking resemblance to the songs you learned in high school history class, except softer, pushed under the magazines

Beneath the squirrel complaining to the squirrel police about dangerous and disrespectful conduct it's neighbors have been performing when he comes to say hello and finally meet someone in the neighborhood, that he's lived so long in, just to be told it's not "Illegal,"

Beneath the slightly offensive joke you made towards your black neighbor, who missed the punchline over the roar of the engine, when you asked him why he was so light skinned, and whether that was a "slavery thing,"

Beneath your child hearing everything

You didn't yet...
You made that happen, didn't you?
This isn't me judging your character
I don't blame you "O' causer of destruction"

You were not given the tools i was given
And similarly i... was not given the tools you were given

You were given a lawnmower, and a camera
A beautiful daughter, a home, a job
Gas! The ability to live where you want!

I...well...
i was given the opportunity to talk to the grass...

And well...

In 1994, that same year, in Rwanda an atrocity was committed, a genocide.

And the characteristic machetes used to massacre the Tutsi people
Contained the same steel blend, from the same producer
As the blades in many lawnmowers at the time.

This isn't a conviction
I did this because i wanted you to know and be okay with being complicit because you exist a certain way
Innocent because you never knew, and couldn't have known

Because we love you
Because we need you
Because we need you to know now
Charlene Tatenda Aug 2013
It’ll be one of those lonely nights
where I’m sipping flat soda and watching That 70’s Show, one of those episodes where Foreman almost loses Donna
and suddenly you will come to mind and I will punch in
the numbers I know by heart.
It will only just register in my head that you
might actually pick up and as soon as I decide
to hang up, the tranquil voice I have yearned to hear will come on the line.
Hello? Hello?
I remember your caller I.D. is busted
and thank the Lord.
Hello? HELLO?
I can almost see your cheeks coloring in frustration
but every insecurity I had when we were together
seizes my throat with a cold, relentless grip
and all I can muster is a weak choking sound.
You try one last desperate greeting before clicking the phone shut,
and the hand loosens its grip to let me breathe,
but only for a moment.
Our relationship was eerily similar to that phone call.
I was the one drowning in sorrow, begging for you to rescue me
but I refused to learn how to swim, so you gave up and I never blamed you.
I still don’t.
With newfound determination I will quickly call back,
but when a high pitched voice filled with
nauseating optimism answers on the second ring,
I’ll remember that I was always the turbulent sea rocking our boat off course,
but I’ll be glad you found a shining lighthouse to lead you safely home.
I will hang up without a word.
Michael Tobias Sep 2013
I will make a fangle of mechanisms,
a creature with iron snouts
and concrete aortas.

Its fevered howl will wake the duplexes
perched on sloped land,
built from collected tins and bottle caps.

Boys sooted in grief will balk like ravens,
chew sweet dip, and spit,
but never reach the foreman’s gate.

They’ll crave a tavern with antlers as chandeliers
where a black flame burns
on the brim of a zinfandel.

But tonight they’ll gristle through streets
to a stale room
where fluorescent lights blanch a young widow’s skin.

Basic cable ministries will flick and dim
in the homes of the wigged ladies who wait for them—
the howl keeps them

breathless, each of them fearing
the slow swallow from a snake’s mouth
to its furnace.
Tessitura, psalms, and songs of praise, they branded atheism when singing Christian psalms in the streets making ineffable groans, where the exordios looked from the back with Delphic prose, where the dart that opens the curtains of the hallelujah tormented, with darts that rubbed weathered in the tentative to rise of the stores of Sanequerib. They are relatives of Incipit Psalm 69. " Saint John said as they continued to climb the Calvary of Profitis Ilias, but this time in the company of the Help of Isaiah, with a great spirit of being from the cavern of Elías in Haifa, at a flat point at the time of the Benedictus. Already the Assyrians were returning the same way they came, as Isaiah prophesied, in the morning with ejaculations that ended with the crass rottenness that could end the day without a step other than an anti-Jesuit one. Prayers go and implore the Omnia Vanitatis, the moment when the sun honors, taking you towards the close of the day with the perpetual antiphon. The vigil was reaching the lines of Isaiah does not rest, in Trinitarian doxology. Where is the darkness, where is the glory to see you...? If the stars collide with each other in Baptismal frowning, and in the mystery of Vernarth that lies a complex, tied to becoming that never begins, and what was Christic history of a morning introit.

Saint John the Apostle and Vernarth express in the Trinitarian doxology: “Through Christ, with him and in him, to you Almighty God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and all glory, forever and ever. Amen"

The triangular taxias of the Hetairoi made faunas that came cutting themselves with the wind of the "incipit" of Psalm 69: "My God, come to my aid;" Lord, hurry to help me ", by the Keras or wings of the site of Arbella; or Gaugamela rather said…, sonnetized by some Pazhetairoi, made up of 32 Syntagmas, as units of sixteen revived Falangists from Court V of the Helleniká Necropolis, bilocated on Patmos, a few feet from the Mandragoron project. Thus the triangular spellings of war were formed again, to the astonishment of all those present. Alexander the Great, already graceful, was over-trained in irrigation and supplications, he was consisting of 128 Syntagmas, with 62 Falangists covered by the Cinnabar that subdivided them into bones by sixteen of the Lochoi or guides. The Syntagma bipartite was enlarged by two Syntagamatarchos captaining two units, all with their semi-open belly, re-liquidating their viscera by the Ghosts of Shiraz, the Saltimbanqui Hydro comes from Roknabad (also known as Aub-e Rokní), from an underground channel which carried spring water to the city from a mountain located ten kilometers northeast of Shiraz. Here he has to mend the propellers and water ropes to do his acrobatics on the water, with greater songs in the poems of the Poet Hafiz. When he bites his tongue, they repair it with the verses of Hafiz's Koran, there are three hundred creeds, three hundred hectares to irrigate with his wheel the sadness of those who cannot have the gift of the rivalry of Montenegro and Monte Blanco, to overestimate the liveliness of the caravan that trembles with uncertain doubts here on Patmos "

Saltimbanqui of Bascule says: “We are Epi ghosts, green in reverie with tutelary ropes, to jump through the trapeze of the photometric units of the heavy Almeria of the highest Mirror of the Sea. Will take you back to Limassol. Curiously to the same ship as the Eurydice that sleeps in the swings of the sea, and in the arms of the petulance of Dionysus in a new awakening of lethargy of theorization of the superstrings of Anaximander, here is the intrinsic speculation of science, already that this is not just purely empirical research. "

In between them, they form even and odd rows. The horizontals were tinged with the Red Blood cells that became volatile and surrounded the Xyston lances, for thirty soldiers of the Diloquia, with their dismembered arms that began to take them back with their hands tightly girded by the song of the Theological Shemesh of San Juan, which subsequently rescinded last in the sum of two taxiarchies, constituting a Syntagma. The units rose with the sickle that cuts definitive death, to reconstitute it in five thousand that should tread through the hierarchies of formations, amid the frolics of the Phalanx, where Vernarth protested to all “Khaire, Kalos irthate apo tin kentriki, Welcome from Hell !"

Thus the Phalanx was constituted among the Syntagmas in metaphors of the Falangists. In this way this antiphon was revealed martial, denoting synergies of the Sybilla Herofila that conferred to the world of Trinitarian Doxology, among ashes that remained by a solid cobblestone witness of the reluctant troops that testified to the sense of interpreting the law of bringing to the world what to their lives it owes them. The prophecy shone from an intangible Isaiah before all in this concomitant episode, and to the degree of the reign of Judah, here together with the prophet Elijah, they faced the hardened fragrances of blessing as oracular teachers of so many goods, and of the benefactor that protects by inspirational mandate, making laws for the end times before closing his own eyes without having prophesied them.

The rows in “V" contrasted with the corridor friezes in the crowned troops of the Hetairoi, and in the syntagmas that became appressed from the triangle that opened the three-quarter proportions of Athenea's physiognomy in Pergamum, subjugating Alcineo, so that finally it was forged in constellations of equanimity in the fifth courtyard or "V" of the Necropolis of Helleniká in the allegory of Vernarth, stopping the plausible dogma of the initial that glosses the Law in Vernarth's "V". This in turn in double syntagm of the Syntagamatarchos guide, in the high sky of Patmos, and in the medrones growing on the antlers of the proclamation of Wonthelimar, which made them a twin "W" in the star that shines in the medrones of the Ibix, in the Cornacabra and in the Cornucopia, with certain docile movement, adhering to acrostic and prehensile preliminaries of the Isaiah saying.

The Phalanx Alexandrina Heterochromatic of Alexander the Great volatilized between the villi of his Falangists, climbs the Holm of Zeus and causes a "Gore" or horrifying reflection, allowing the rhizomes to become a hundredfold, which will make the nominal order of five thousand, for each member of the Syntagma, in an astonishing quantum that reproduced itself to materialize before Him. Then he tied each one of them as Prometheus chained to each of the oaks, from an Akane grocer, incontinenti withdraws a sharp dagger and opens each one's veins to free them from the isolation of so many years settled in their last heterochromia of the War Iridium that he conferred on them, to endure the visit of the spirited Grim Reaper. This causes liberation, in this way they re-install themselves in their bodies, with Iridium or iris that made them see before their optics in two biases of Hoplite alter egos, impacting half of their body. Alexander the Great, being the philanthropic heir and of Platonic legacy, made them superfluous in the melanin that fell from the Epíchisis or libation vessel, to taste the effluvia of Dionysus with the maenads, with wide ambivalence filling them with viticulture, so that they would flow through the veins of his soldiers, and to revive them with the Dionysian must of melanin to the left eye of the Hegemon King Alexander the Great, with Jasper in the left, and the right with ultramarine from the bottom of the Ionian, on the banks of the washed banks of Patmos, in high swells of Greek alcohol that was distilled from the Mosacism of the stones when unraveling the peripheral forces from the prefectures of the great native of Pelas. They ordered areas of all Greece under their heterochromia flow that gave life to the Perifereoaki, or periphery for Central and Western Macedonia that came with great vigor, with Epirius central, western Greece, Peloponnese, and Crete. East Macedonia and Thrace, Ionian Islands, North Aegean, and Thessaly, later they would go for the Aldehyde alcohol that summarized and epitomized Dionysus taking him with four eagles that distilled the unprisoned Syntagmas of the lines of 16, 32, 64, etc...., for purposes never to start on an omega all the way to the Ionian Islands from Corfu.

Alexander the Great, went near the pre-urbanization of the Mandragoron towards Vernarth, somewhat dizzy, and before attending to him he presented himself first to the Zefian; who looked at his iris like a foreman who re-divided his visuals, by prevailing in eagerness to restore his soldiers, to help in the construction of adventures of life, and to assist in building the Megaron, which still rested in the myopia of mythological vision of the Gods tied in animosity with the Titans. Overwhelmingly, he highlighted the clouding or turbidity that was seen beyond the radius or visual field of two realities, found in visual refraction and interference with refractive statisms of the periphery that led him to the other world in Babylon when death imprisoned him...? Here the root revived, it became parallel in a unique world with divergent lights, which entered his Akera or right-wing of his soldiers, bringing visual acuity that brought the perchlorate volatilizations that hovered in the boots of his soldiers, when they marched in awareness of the retina and of the mean light, that for the first time was clarified in true holistic and political from a Parthenon with the musk of mortals and immortals of neo Hegemonic ophthalmology, which he was already re-leading by his command, where he was going to invest his greatest and most spiritual elemental Commander Vernarth, with his Himation.

The rays of his eyes seemed distant, but they were diffuse and alternate, they wandered through the lens of his clouding, which blinds a partial of the left Akera, or flank of the Hypaspists that dazzled Parmenion. Here the optics of Alexander the Great, remained in the diatribe of the small eye next to another that was enlarged, being hyperopic of a mysterious confine in the severity of Dionisio when confronted with him, in light effects of the high liquid vineyard, refracting meridians in his troops next to the Hexagonal Primogeniture who observed them behind the magenta image, which was the one that flashed from the Clouded holm oak and eclipsed by calm heat movements, and rising air masses that were in the opportune station of good sense. When being aided by the Maenads and the Herophile, they were teaching from a parent, who now sponsored the entire political and spiritual will of the Hoplite side, made up of the King of the World Vernarth, together with Alexander the Great, after receiving the photocoagulated lightning bolts. of the officers, under redeeming and reduced of the metabolic, and of the oxygenated preeminences of new lungs for each devout consecrated body, towards Saint John, the Apostle, pigmented and mechanized with aggravating heterochromia, and extensive in the bodies raised in new parallels that have to confront an anonymous or semi-god by turning for his own.
Antiphon Benedictus III Isaiah / Syntagma
Waverly Aug 2012
Do you love him more than me?
Is there something beautiful and indistinct
In him?

Can you bow like never  before,
A prayer of spine?

Do you kiss him like an angel,
And dole out your lips to the stupid others?

Does ignorance call your name,
And hope drive the nail?

When I see her again,
She hugs me casually,
And the smell of her hair
Is an ink,
On my wife-beater.
It soils, and oils
And stains.

Beneath the darkness of her car,
The shadows become loam,
And in the cabin she squeezes out a waving hand,
By the time she pulls away
I am working hard
not to pound her hood,
And demand a return trip
To the factory of my heart,
Where she could be a foreman
And wish things of me all day,
Working a hot sheet of my skin
Into a pliable mass,
And the body of my sins
Into the image of God,
So much so,
That the mere dream of that forge would make her stop
Her car
In the middle of the street,
Hop out,
And walk up to me, repeating a sentence in this gist:
She doesn’t know anything anymore,
Not even how she feels about him.

Make me that God of your
Life
Once more,
Deliver me from evil
And the hands of wickedness that render my soul.

I must be a God in your midst,
a love of the mist.

I know my sins,
I only call you when I'm drunk,
hollering your name
in hurtful epithets.
SG Holter Nov 2014
Did I offend you?*
the new foreman doesn't know me
that well yet.
I move quickly. make noise
when I work. might not always
pay the respect others feel
themselves due.

sir. I've been declared dead once
already. my surgeon was a veteran,
he still gets chills when looking
back at how my heart
started up again after the final,
desperate zap.

this combination of high blood
pressure and Warfarin has me
knowing full well that I hover
above my grave at all times.
one sneeze or a falling object
combined with the right amount of
everyday bad luck

could see me either dead, or worse;  
needing help to feed or  
wipe myself.
it takes more than constructive
criticism to ruin my day.


more than mere words.
more than thoughtlessness.
more than a bad-beard-day,
a traffic jam or the kind of remark
that a foreman fresh to the site
might dispense to seem
confident to the boys.

my world is a friendly one.
it's easy to understand and forgive
when you've been so close to death
that all those who haven't, are 
children.
She deserves recognition
For her work as a technician
Who's expertise is ball bustin
Who majors in *******

Excelling in the field of advance
Hot air production
A profession heckler who
Composes an orchestra conductin

A firework show eruptin
With colorful rants red, and purples
She's acclaimed for rhetorical
Questions that repeats in circles

An elite linguistics scholar
Who's sarcasm is an accomplishment
Very talented...no gifted at making
An insult sound like a compliment

And Her stamina to do so
Is like an Olympian who's pleased
Only when her track and field
Meet of slander makes ur ears bleed

A masters degree in belittling
A graduated philosopher for the bitter
Must be a psychologist the way
She attacks my sanity to litter

Insecurities, and doubts and I
Heard she has a phd in hypnosis
Until u start to believe her *******
And this psychosomatic is ur psychosis

A world class magician who's
Tricks leave u perplexed in thought
A novelist who narrates to taunt
Controlling all characters and plot

She wrote the book on torturing
A man and emasculating him so
He may never move forward and
She was in the military I'm told

Historically known for her
intellectual Warfare
Manipulating soilders and utilizing
The grounds to ambush u there

A social tyrant who's brilliant
Political ties help her achieve
Her plan like constituents are
Biased so they're all after me

A paralegal who's unfair and lethal
And to her it's titalation
Unfair is her terms but like a
Perm ull get burned in litagation

A degree in early childhood
Education so she acts like a rebel
Perfecting being childish and
Unaffected by ur feelings on levels

Only a schoolyard bully could
Match, she's my jailhouse warden
Who's power is focused on me
Relentlessly constructing like a foreman

With Her future blueprints to
See what the hell she builds for me
Will look like, and she's also a director
In the ******* industry

So she tells in great detail
Just how I'll be ******
She must have been taught by
Peter pan how to never grow up

Trained as medic who specializes
In one area over them all
Nudering human males
So surgically she removes my *****

After she breaks them and
So I am the constant fool
This exceptional jack of trades
Makes me wish that I stayed in school
Kuah Yee Han May 2015
Overkill, that's what this is, a battle uphill
Who cares? We're just in it for the thrill
Excuse me, miss, can I have the bill?
Pay it off with a twenty-dollar bill
Gotta get to the bullfighting in Seville
This is what I do, you could say I'm mentally ill.

Better get a check-up with Dr. Phil.
I'll just tell him rhymes are what I instill, its a unique skill
Keep doing this even when the world is spinning like a windmill
Like the Storming of the Bastille, there is no escape, take a sleeping pill
Deep water runs still, I'll toss you on a George Foreman grill
Make your Last Will and Testament, because this is overkill.
Isaac Golle Jun 2012
I've seen them all disappear

All my friends givin' away their lives to ***, drugs, and beer.

There's a lack of reason for hope in their lives and yet still

Something within them thrives.

They've made the choice to quell God's voice while I strive so very hard to hear and to listen and yet still!

All I feel is lost and confused it's like all my strength is used and my trust abused

I feel like a sailor on a ship lost at sea with nothing left but a knife and some T3's

I'm trying so very hard to follow God's calling but you see it's VERY HARD when He's the only one calling

No place to stay except a place that wants to send you away or lead you astray

Make a choice make a choice they cry and I reply can't you hear God's voice and all I get is well that's not practical

So now I find myself in an ever shrinking bubble trying to avoid trouble but it's OH SO HARD when He's the only one calling!

All I can think about is the people who've left and gone astray, taking their own path saying Hey this must be the way!

They're only living for them self and God sits in the bible on their shelf waiting

While His desires grow dusty and cold in the darkest recesses of their mind my

Oh my.

I really do not want that to be me cuz as far as I can see Jesus said COME, FOLLOW ME and a fully alive disciple is all I want to be.

I used to struggle with the verse about hating your own family but I've come to learn that I really hate, what they want for me to be successful safe and happy.

I don't understand where all this depression is coming from!!

But one thing I understand is that it's hard to live in this land and follow God's calling, when He's the only one calling.

I want to remain faithful, but then my old friend Mr. doubt comes along and rears his head.

His favorite time to come around is late at night when I'm trying to go to bed.

He says I have been led astray and Jesus is not the only way

And I always say you're right, He's not.

BUT THE REST ARE LIES and as Jon Foreman oh so graciously said, "the water keeps on fallin' from my eyes"

I've read all the verses about God's provision and how He gives gifts to those who keep His kingdom the number one priority in aaaall of their decisions But honestly in this small town it's hard to make a livin'...and still feel like you're livin'.

All this doubt and worry hurts cuz the devil often flirts with my imagination shouting WHAT IF YOU FAIL or WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG or what if you don't even have the words to finish this song?

See I wish I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me but in all honesty lately it hasn't felt like He's been doing anything for me.

But I still suppose that Christ has much more than a plan for me.

It's just that sometimes it's really hard to see.

Cuz it's really hard to follow God's calling when He's the only one calling me.
Done as spoken word here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iucDQ5af_NQ
Marshal Gebbie Jun 2011
For Beep & Sue Robinson, Foreman, Victoria Park Tunnel


Auntie Elaine Kingii
Died last night in her sleep,
Ninety years of age
Keeping secrets she would keep.
Last night she passed away
In her tiny single bed,
At the Onehunga rest home
Where she finally laid her head.

Auntie Elaine Kingii
Lived her long life on the street
Helping other vagrants
Find a kinder place to sleep,
Helping other street kids
With the hassles of their day,
Sharing a quick cigarette
Or a dryer place to stay.

Auntie Elaine Kingii
In her ninety years of life
Had eighteen babies born to her
From sailors , waifs and like.
Eighteen babies born to her
Beneath the Grafton bridge,
Each with unknown fathers
Or a family heritage.

Auntie Elaine Kingie
As a girl danced out of class
Where the morning sunshine sparkled
On the crystal dew, clad grass,
And her green eyes shone with lustre
In her  joy of dancing free,
Whilst the street kids stood in cluster
Quite entranced by what they see.

Auntie Elaine Kingii
With her eyes of emerald green
Lived her days among the lost souls
Of the City Mission scene.
Life amongst free spirits
Was a chosen path for her
Shunning organised prosperity
With a structured raconteur.

Auntie Elaine Kingii
With her eyes of emerald glass
Chose to die the way she lived
Quite serenely with her class.
Happy with the company
Of whom she would befriend
In the park surrounds of Auckland city’s
Busy people blend.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
21 June 2011

— The End —