History has shown
They will kill their own
Before living with others in peace
Have no doubt
That hatred is as nourishment
Sustenance
Subsistence
A necessity for existence
They can not do without
Burning hot as fire within the wretched souls
Of those
Whose evil knows
No bounds
Would kill you
As soon as kick you
Because your skin is Olive or Brown
Or you pray to a Deity
That your life revolves around
The depravity
The corruption
Never cease to be astounded
By
Those that NEED someone to hate
Who would these mongers hate
If successful in their efforts
To eradicate
Everyone who was, from themselves, different?
If they knifed all the niggers,
Burned all the beaners,
Chopped up all the chinks
Would this, their hate, augment?
If they tortured the towel heads
Killed the catholics
Hanged the homos
Would this, finally, curb discontent?
Or
Would the haters implode
And begin to feed upon themselves
Would short people
Shoot tall people?
Would merely looking at skinny
Make fatty incensed?
Would brown-eyed people
Kill blue-eyed people?
Would red hair and freckles
Be a stoning offense?
Would black-haired people
Break blond-haired people?
This is a hate poem…
And hate seldom makes sense…
But sensical or no…
Seems the real status quo
Matters love that we show
There will always be those
That just plain NEED
Someone to hate
....................................................................
Once upon a morning glory,
As pondered I this dreary story,
I passed a man of tattered soul
Who had his head stuck in a hole.
And, oh how whined this little man,
Who asked if I would lend a hand.
So, respectfully I preened to view
Those things that crazy people do.
And how he moaned, and wept, and cried,
He begged. He whimpered. He even sighed,
And I studied his condition fair,
To see if I could help him there.
Yet, did this act of kindness show
How much I wanted him to go
And cry on someone elses door?
Oh no, he only cried the more.
And the more he cried I so debated
On how to get this man sedated,
To quiet up his noisy trap
Before I absolutely snap.
So, his head was stuck inside a hole,
And not just any hole, but so
Very small a hole, I'd guessed
He'd ventured this to simply test
That square within a circle theory.
And so, I uttered thrice with weary:
"I do not care! I do not care!
Just yank your fat head out of there!"
But cried he more the more he cried.
He groaned and moaned so deep inside,
I felt at least a smidgen sad
For this sorry little lad.
The day was not so kind to me!
There were places I'd much rather be,
Places not akin as much
To sticking heads in holes and such.
So, great friend that I know I am,
I called our famous 911.
And they told the local City Police,
And called in all the firemen.
They brought in a Paramedic Team,
And every single Girl Scout.
And then hushed their laughter just enough
To dig the sorry goofball out.
Copyright © 2004 Richard D. Remler
....................................................................
"All my life, I always wanted to be somebody.
Now I see that I should have been more specific."
~Jane Wagner,
(The Search For Intelligent Life In The Universe)
performed by Lily Tomlin
.....................................................................
4 corners in the peak
of the room, the
choleric teacher has finally
let his guards down over
the wild hysterics, throwing
paper airplanes over heads,
over the pretty-perfect bleach
blonde girls only caring
about that new band,
over the tight glasses hunching
over their spick and span notebooks
over the video-game playing
boys punching keyboards
over the introverted hoody-hiding
kids, over the cynic stoned eye
blooded kids, over the goody-two shoes
filling calculations in the pockets
of their minds.
and i am in between air lines,
drifting like the wind, like they are clouds
curled together whilst boards and
screens shine over them,
and i am sighing, writing poetry,
wishing i was in another place,
wishing i was in a room full of
pages pressing against my soul
and poets lurking eyes of
prose and stanza.
"heaven's really crowded," peter said to me
over black coffee on Maple Street
while we watched the kings and counselors
in collegiate sweaters
lose all their religion
like we'd lost ours.
it fell like hailstones—
they all flipped their collars up
and their heads down;
we looked cozy in the window
and we laughed like we weren't
freezing too.
"this weather's crazy," he shook his head
and rubbed his hands together for the friction;
"hellfire looks better every day."
we smiled and put our gloves back on
to revel in our endless earthly cold.
quietly we weighed his words
and decided they were heavy;
we lit a cigarette to share,
blew the smoke up at the holy high school dance
and said with youthful vehemence,
"god damn."
Been dazed and confused for so long it's not true
There were kids
Sitting in the soft night's semicircle
Encased in a haze of smoke
The darkness enfolding them in a cloak
Of all mysterious things nocturnal
Making it all eternal
A superficial feeling of found truth
A white aura of blazing youth
Conquering the darkness with the fiery tips of lit joints
Puffing chimeras and golden illusions
Things left unsaid yet lead not to confusion
The substance and the glowing friends
Seems to fix everything and make ineffable amends
Lends them some heightened receptivity
With some dazzling sensitivity
To the dizzy promises of life
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you
There was blue bottles and red cups
Sloshing full of 21st century ambrosia
Every moment of the night
Is doused in glowing star-light
Different rooms, dark places
Different shadows, similar faces
Lots of people talk and few of them know
There was music softly ebbing and weaving its way to us
Soul of a woman was created below
Gleaming sequined pillows
Curtains ebbing in delicate billows
That no amount of reality could ever harden
In the black garden
Amidst the tangy, acrid scent
Boys and girls came and went
Among the soughs and the vodka and the gleaming stars
We are young; vodka replaces wine, blunts replace cigars
You hurt and abuse tellin' all of your lies
An adagio of whispers travels with a florid vibration
Waves of words, swirls of conversation
High kids trying to touch
What has never been tangible
Run around sweet baby, Lord how they hypnotize
These kids linger on towering stools and lush couches
Leaning back with careless slouches
Or wander back and forth
Breathing dreams like air
Sweet little baby, I don't know where you've been
An elusive rhythm throbs in the humid atmosphere
Fragments of lost words hover on drunken lips
A stirring warmth flows
From bodies spilled together
Snuggled under a blanket of stars
Gonna love you baby, here I come again
Hands take hold of hands
And fingers tightly interlace
Throbbing softly with fluctuating warmth
The room is electric, filled with tiny flowing currents
Try to love you baby, but you push me away
In this wake of boozed up elations
All sorrows are aborted, all conscience is obliterated
Blitzed kisses are exchanged, transitory enchanted moments
Bemused nudges and tender embraces
Arms around shoulders, heads resting drowsily
All of this immediate and forever
Don't know where you're goin', only know just where you've been
And the tipsy, blissfully mindless joy of youth
Gives them bleary yet satisfactory hints of the unreality of reality
Sweet little baby, I want you again
The teens are flickering in and out of consciousness like befuddled fireflies
The sober ones roam the rooms, drifting haphazardly about
Simultaneously enchanted, bewildered, and repelled
By the seemingly inexhaustible variety of drunken fun,
The racy, adventurous mood of the night
Been dazed and confused for so long, it's not true
We are all so young
So young and dipped in the dust of folly
And our laughs contain a hint of melancholy
The magic of nights like these,
When the spell of mortality is broken,
Eludes us all,
Yet we cling to them
Like moths to a flame.
Nights like these dig deep in the stuff of the soul
But there is still much to be learned
Back beyond the pines lay a stream.
Cold blue water swirling and tumbling all over itself
where small fish darted about
scrounging for particles of food to sustain their life aquatic,
beavers, up a little ways on the hydro-vein, had built a dam,
he knew because he found it once,
watched furry little heads sink beneath the surface
to escape this furless beast that had invaded their territory.
There was also a small canoe,
tethered to a tree on his side of the bank.
He never knew from where it came or when it had gotten there.
It simply seemed to have showed up one day and squatted,
bobbing up and down gently on windy days,
looking very old and crusted over from the first time he had seen it.
It having spent its entire life just to end up in small stream
that led nowhere in little patch of forest separating two different subdivisions,
where hundreds of people who would never meet
lived in such closeness
behind the walls of their respective forts.
And then out of the darkness
ahead of the eager masses
Under that light stood two men,
heads adorned in metallic masks obstructing their identities.
The crowd stood still,
silent as death.
With the stoke of a finger sound erupted around them in an electric symphony,
and the masses were pleased.
Joyous, exuberant, placated.
The solitary light was then joined by a dozen of its brethren,
dancing across the sea of human life in a cascade of color.
The steady rhythmic snare of the sound increasing in volume.
Then after a great length of time it began to fade and so did the lights fade.
Decreasing in multitude until there was yet again only one shining above the metallic men.
As quickly as they came, they were gone.
The masses faded in to the darkness.
I drew an exclamation point in the air
I watched it float around
It moved with the people
The wind
The noise of the city
I saw the exclamation point
Just floating
And so I decided
To turn it
Into
A poem
Not so different from this one
Was the poem
I picked up a pen
And wrote
And wrote
And wrote
In the air
And you saw
Me writing
My poem
And you saw
The exclamation point
Floating
Towards you
And so you asked me
And I said I didn’t know
But I do know
And you said
What
And I said
I don’t know
But I know
So you said
Tell me what you don’t know
And I said
I don’t know
So you said
Tell me what you know
And I told you
About the poem
And the exclamation point
And you smiled
And held out your hand
And I put a pen in it
And we wrote in the air
Beside the point
Punctuation floating round our heads.
Fragile wings and folded arms
Heads hanging low, of sickness it warns.
This once bright seraph
Now dark as it lay
While the devil is laughing
The world falls away.
in my father’s car, father driving, my fingers curled as if readying themselves for the wheel. father small talking, his dark chatter, my hands like jaws left open, horrified before the heads god plans to put them in. heads not to scale. heads trial size.
I worry the heat in my eyes is permanent. my lids worry as well and retreat. burn pain is its own person telling me I am long term its most bearable memory.
the hospital seems a distant campfire lowered by the sleepy laughter of the still beautiful. my daughter. who as a girl melted the faces of two action figures with the bulb of a reading lamp not to upset her brothers but so the figures could kiss.
I begin to make sense all by myself and nod to the dog shaped thing drowsing in the car’s murk just beyond my feet. politely father asks if he can help and I okay him asking me anything. he chooses the health of my sons. one in particular. I stick to the dog. to the puppies it ran from no faster
had they been aflame.
