Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
We had wanted to leave our homes before six in the morning
but left late and lazy at ten or ten-thirty with hurried smirks
and heads turned to the road, West
driving out against the noonward horizon
and visions before us of the great up-and-over

and tired we were already of stiff-armed driving neurotics in Montreal
and monstrous foreheaded yellow bus drivers
ugly children with long middle fingers
and tired we were of breaking and being yelled at by beardless bums
but thought about the beards at home we loved
and gave a smile and a wave nonetheless

Who were sick and tired of driving by nine
but then had four more hours still
with half a tank
then a third of a tank
then a quarter of a tank
then no tank at all
except for the great artillery halt and discovery
of our tyre having only three quarters of its bolts

Saved by the local sobriety
and the mystic conscious kindness of the wise and the elderly
and the strangers: Autoshop Gale with her discount familiar kindness;
Hilda making ready supper and Ray like I’ve known you for years
that offered me tools whose functions I’ve never known
and a handshake goodbye

     and "yes we will say hello to your son in Alberta"
     and "yes we will continue safely"
     and "no you won’t see us in tomorrow’s paper"
     and tired I was of hearing about us in tomorrow’s paper

Who ended up on a road laughing deliverance
in Ralphton, a small town hunting lodge
full of flapjacks and a choir of chainsaws
with cheap tomato juice and eggs
but the four of us ended up paying for eight anyway

and these wooden alley cats were nothing but hounds
and the backwoods is where you’d find a cheap child's banjo
and cheap leather shoes and bear traps and rat traps
and the kinds of things you’d fall into face first

Who sauntered into a cafe in Massey
that just opened up two weeks previous
where the food was warm and made from home
and the owner who swore to high heaven
and piled her Sci-Fi collection to the ceiling
in forms of books and VHS

but Massey herself was drowned in a small town
where there was little history and heavy mist
and the museum was closed for renovations
and the stores were run by diplomats
or sleezebag no-cats
and there was one man who wouldn’t show us a room
because his baby sitter hadn’t come yet
but the babysitter showed up through the backdoor within seconds
though I hadn't seen another face

        and the room was a landfill
        and smelled of stale cat **** anyhow
        and the lobby stacked to the ceiling with empty beer box cans bottles
        and the taps ran cold yellow and hot black through spigots

but we would be staying down the street
at the inn of an East-Indian couple

who’s eyes were not dilated 
and the room smelled
lemon-scented

and kept on driving lovingly without a care in the world
but only one of us had his arms around a girl
and how lonely I felt driving with Jacob
in the fog of the Agawa pass;

following twin red eyes down a steep void mass
where the birch trees have no heads
and the marshes pool under the jagged foothills
that climb from the water above their necks

that form great behemoths
with great voices bellowing and faces chiselled hard looking down
and my own face turned upward toward the rain

Wheels turning on a black asphalt river running uphill around great Superior
that is the ocean that isn’t the ocean but is as big as the sea
and the cloud banks dig deep and terrible walls

and the sky ends five times before night truly falls
and the sun sets slower here than anywhere
but the sky was only two miles high and ten long anyway

The empty train tracks that seldom run
and some rails have been lifted out
with a handful of spikes that now lay dormant

and the hill sides start to resemble *******
or faces or the slow curving back of some great whale

-and those, who were finally stranded at four pumps
with none but the professional Jacob reading great biblical instructions at the nozzle
nowhere at midnight in a town surrounded

by moose roads
                             moose lanes
                                                     moose rivers
and everything mooses

ending up sleeping in the maw of a great white wolf inn
run by Julf or Wolf or John but was German nonetheless

and woke up with radios armed
and arms full
and coffee up to the teeth
with teeth chattering
and I swear to God I saw snowy peaks
but those came to me in waking dream:

"Mountains dressed in white canvas
gowns and me who placed
my hands upon their *******
that filled the sky"

Passing through a buffet of inns and motels
and spending our time unpacking and repacking
and talking about drinking and cheap sandwiches
but me not having a drink in eight days

and in one professional inn we received a professional scamming
and no we would not be staying here again
and what would a trip across the country be like
if there wasn’t one final royal scamming to be had

and dreams start to return to me from years of dreamless sleep:

and I dream of hers back home
and ribbons in a raven black lattice of hair
and Cassadaic exploits with soft but honest words

and being on time with the trains across the plains  
and the moon with a shower of prairie blonde
and one of my father with kind words
and my mother on a bicycle reassuring my every decision

Passing eventually through great plains of vast nothingness
but was disappointed in seeing that I could see
and that the rumours were false
and that nothingness really had a population
and that the great flat land has bumps and curves and etchings and textures too

beautiful bright golden yellow like sprawling fingers
white knuckled ablaze reaching up toward the sun
that in this world had only one sky that lasted a thousand years

and prairie driving lasts no more than a mountain peak
and points of ember that softly sigh with the one breath
of our cars windows that rushes by with gratitude for your smile

And who was caught up with the madness in the air
with big foaming cigarettes in mouths
who dragged and stuffed down those rolling fumes endlessly
while St. Jacob sang at the way stations and billboards and the radio
which was turned off

and me myself and I running our mouth like the coughing engine
chasing a highway babe known as the Lady Valkyrie out from Winnipeg
all the way to Saskatoon driving all day without ever slowing down
and eating up all our gas like pez and finally catching her;

      Valkyrie who taught me to drive fast
      and hovering 175 in slipstreams
      and flowing behind her like a great ghost Cassady ******* in dreamland Nebraska
      only 10 highway crossings counted from home.

Lady Valkyrie who took me West.
Lady Valkyrie who burst my wings into flame as I drew a close with the sun.
Lady Valkyrie who had me howl at slender moon;

     who formed as a snowflake
     in the light on the street
     and was gone by morning
     before I asked her name

and how are we?
and how many?

Even with old Tom devil singing stereo
and riding shotgun the entire trip from day one
singing about his pony, and his own personal flophouse circus,
and what was he building in there?

There is a fair amount of us here in these cars.
Finally at light’s end finding acquiescence in all things
and meeting with her eye one last time; flashed her a wink and there I was, gone.
Down the final highway crossing blowing wind and fancy and mouth puttering off
roaring laughter into the distance like some tremendous Phoenix.

Goodnight Lady Valkyrie.

The evening descends and turns into a sandwich hysteria
as we find ourselves riding between cities of transports
and that one mad man that passed us speeding crazy
and almost hit head-on with Him flowing East

and passed more and more until he was head of the line
but me driving mad lunacy followed his tail to the bumper
passing fifteen trucks total to find our other car
and felt the great turbine pull of acceleration that was not mine

mad-stacked behind two great beasts
and everyone thought us moon-crazy; Biblical Jake
and Mad Hair Me driving a thousand
eschewing great gusts of wind speed flying

Smashing into the great ephedrine sunset haze of Saskatoon
and hungry for food stuffed with the thoughts of bedsheets
off the highway immediately into the rotting liver of dark downtown
but was greeted by an open Hertz garage
with a five-piece fanfare brass barrage
William Tell and a Debussy Reverie
and found our way to bedsheets most comfortably

Driving out of Saskatoon feeling distance behind me.
Finding nothing but the dead and hollow corpses of roadside ventures;

more carcasses than cars
and one as big as a moose
and one as big as a bear
and no hairier

and driving out of sunshine plain reading comic book strip billboards
and trees start to build up momentum
and remembering our secret fungi in the glove compartment
that we drove three thousand kilometres without remembering

and we had a "Jesus Jacob, put it away brother"
and went screaming blinded by smoke and paranoia
and three swerves got us right
and we hugged the holy white line until twilight

And driving until the night again takes me foremast
and knows my secret fear in her *****
as the road turns into a lucid *** black and makes me dizzy
and every shadow is a moose and a wildcat and a billy goat
and some other car

and I find myself driving faster up this great slanderous waterfall until I meet eye
with another at a thousand feet horizontal

then two eyes

then a thousand wide-eyed peaks stretching faces upturned to the celestial black
with clouds laid flat as if some angel were sleeping ******* on a smokestack
and the mountains make themselves clear to me after waiting a lifetime for a glimpse
then they shy away behind some old lamppost and I don’t see them until tomorrow

and even tomorrow brings a greater distance with the sunlight dividing stone like 'The Ancient of Days'
and moving forward puts all into perspective

while false cabins give way
and the gas stations give way
and the last lamppost gives way
and its only distance now that will make you true
and make your peaks come alive

Like a bullrush, great grey slopes leap forth as if branded by fire
then the first peaks take me by surprise
and I’m told that these are nothing but children to their parents
and the roads curve into a gentle valley
and we’re in the feeding zone

behind the gates of some great geological zoo
watching these lumbering beasts
finishing up some great tribal *******
because tomorrow they will be shrunk
and tomorrow ever-after smaller

Nonetheless, breathless in turn I became
it began snowing and the pines took on a different shape
and the mountains became covered white
and great glaciers could be seen creeping
and tourists seen gawking at waterfalls and waterfowls
and fowl play between two stones a thousand miles high

climbing these Jasper slopes flying against wind and stone
and every creak lets out its gentle tone and soft moans
as these tyres rub flat against your back
your ancient skin your rock-hard bones

and this peak is that peak and it’s this one too
and that’s Temple, and that’s Whistler
and that’s Glasgow and that’s Whistler again
and those are the Three Sisters with ******* ablaze

and soft glowing haze your sun sets again among your peaks
and we wonder how all these caves formed
and marvelled at what the flood brought to your feet
as roads lay wasted by the roadside

in the epiphany of 3:00am realizing
that great Alta's straights and highway crossings
are formed in torturous mess from mines of 'Mt. Bleed'
and broken ribs and liver of crushed mountain passes
and the grey stones taxidermied and peeled off
and laid flat painted black and yellow;
the highways built from the insides
of the mountain shells

Who gave a “What now. New-Brunswick?”

and a “What now, Quebec, and Ontario, and Manitoba, and Saskatchewan";
**** fools clumsily dancing in the valleys; then the rolling hills; then the sea that was a lake
then the prairies and not yet the mountains;

running naked in formation with me at the lead
and running naked giving the finger to the moon
and the contrails, and every passing blur on the highway
dodging rocks, and sandbars
and the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Law
and holes dug-up by prairie dogs
and watching with no music
as the family caravans drove on by

but drove off laughing every time until two got anxious for bed and slowed behind
while the rambling Jacob and I had to wait in the half-moon spectacle
of a black-tongue asphalt side-road hacking darts and watching for grizzlies
for the other two to finish up with their birthday *** exploits
though it was nobodies birthday

and then a timezone was between us
 and they were in the distant future
and nobodies birthday was in an hour from now

then everything was good
and everyone was satiated
then everything was a different time again
and I was running on no sleep or a lot of it
leaping backward in time every so often
like gaining a new day but losing space on the surface of your eye

but I stared up through curtains of starlight to mother moon
and wondered if you also stared
and was dumbfounded by the majesty of it all

and only one Caribou was seen the entire trip
and only one live animal, and some forsaken deer
and only a snake or a lonesome caterpillar could be seen crossing such highway straights
but the water more refreshing and brighter than steel
and glittered as if it were hiding some celestial gem
and great ravines and valleys flowed between everything
and I saw in my own eye prehistoric beasts roaming catastrophe upon these plains
but the peaks grew ever higher and I left the ground behind
Antino Art Feb 2018
South Florida
if you were a body part,
you’d be an armpit.

You’d be a bulged vein
on the side of a forehead
forever locked in a scowl
behind sunglasses.

You speak the language of horns
middle name, finger
blood type, combustible

You're a melting ***
that's boiled over the lid
sweating salt water at the brows
eyes red as the brake lights
in the maddening brightness,
you’re torrential daylight
heating nerves like greenhouse gasses
waiting for a reason to explode.

You’re a tropical motilov cocktail
no one can afford
2 parts anger, 1 part stupidity
full of yourself in a souvenir glass with a toothpick umbrella
You're all image

You’re all talk: the curse words
breaking out the mouths
of the angry line mob at Starbucks in the morning
You’re the indifferent silence
in the arena at the Heat games leaving early,
showing up late
due to the distance
from Brickell to Hialeah,
West Palm to Pompano
the gap between the entitled and the under-paid
a skyline of condos in a third world country
You’ve always been foreign to me.

You’re winterless, no chill
you attract only hurricanes
and tourists,
shoving anything that isn’t profitable
out of the way like post-storm debris
into the backyards of the Liberty City projects,
onto a landfill off the side of the Turnpike
Hide it beneath Bermuda grass,
line it with palm trees
if only conceal your cold blooded nature:
I see you.
You are overrun with iguanas,
blood-******* mosquitos
hot-headed New York drivers
not afraid to get hit

You get yours, Soflo
and you'll go as low
as the flat roofs of your duplexes
and the wages that can barely pay the rent to get it
latitude as attitude
temper as temperature
if you were a body part
I swear you’re an *******

south of the brain, one hour
in all directions,
I’d find you.
You’d impose your way
onto my flight to the Philippines,
to Seattle, to Raleigh
You’d follow me like excess baggage,
like gravity,
bringing me back when asked where I'm from:

That area north of Miami, I’d say
(the suburbs, but whatever, we are hard in our own way)
I'd show you off on their map
like some badge of grit,
certificate of aggression
I know how to break a sweat
walk brisk, drive evasive
ride storms in my sleep
I know you, I’d say,
“He’s a friend of mine.”
and I’d watch them light up
and remember
the postcards you've sent them
of the sunrise,
welcoming brown immigrants
onto white sand beaches
You were foreign to us
yet raised us as your own
in the furnace of your summers
iron on iron, the forger striking
softness into swords
built for survival
I'm made of you

my South Floridian temper
cools down
in your ocean breeze

if you were a body part,
you'd be a part of me
a socked foot in an And1 sandal
pressed to the gas pedal
as my drive takes me north
of your borders, far from home

I see you
in the rear view mirror,
tail-gating
like a sports car on the exit ramp
the color of the sun.
Jon Tobias Nov 2011
I am an earthquake

In the desert

Working the rough sand to settle

In my belly

So that the ache in the pit of my gut

Might lose its shape

These shoulder blades feel like wings sometimes

Too bad these hands are prehensile

Not feathered or webbed

Just full of chemo-quake

And tremble

Unless I can hold your hand

Hold my hand

I’ll reverberate your ***** soul to settle

Till we’ve shaken the dust a firmament

Big enough to stand on

I need redemption enough

That stuck in the filter of my cleansing

Is enough dirt to build a hill to stand on

Forget heaven

When I can stand on the land of my past mistakes

And revel in the beauty I left behind

Don’t get left behind

And don’t go to heaven

Just stay with me in the middle

Where I have managed to compact this broken to solid

Like a ghost in a landfill

Haunt these hollow halls of filth with me

Until ***** is all that’s left

***** is all that is left

I understand that you might want to bathe sometimes

Not everyone can live like I do

Not everyone shares my infatuation

With broken things like I do

Let me get you just a little *****

Let me break you too

Let me recycle our fuckery

Till the filaments fit

I am a “found” artist

Making the broken beautiful

What everyone keeps forgetting

Is that even we are recyclable

And there isn’t anything that cannot be rebuilt

So let me make a new heaven

So that I can be like a ghost

Haunting a landfill
Stuck in my car. Thank you phone.
Cristin H Apr 2013
I'm filling up
like a landfill
my heart is starting to feel
like an anvil
And I'm starting to think that maybe,

Maybe this world's not meant for me
or me for it
or us for each other like in a
"mutual" break up
which is an idiom,
because love is never quite

symmetrical.
See, love is like a heart drawn by a
fifth grader.
It's never quite the same
on either side
and if you ever told them they were wrong
for drawing it that way
you lied.
Because that:
lop sided
sloppy
hunched over heart,

that:
innocent
delicate
Beautiful heart,

Is exactly what love is.

When we're older,
we learn to draw straighter lines
to hide our shaking hands.

Don't let them know you're nervous.

We learn to whisper what we don't want heard,
To make silent our thoughts,
in public.
Fights were meant for closed doors and walls
that are never quite thick enough
to keep words that hard, from breaking them down.
Even the fights,
that you fought against someone
who looks much too like you.

When, then, can I open my mind like a book
for only them to read.
When can I open my chest like a puzzle box
for them to put together.
When can I apologize for having before,
what I only ever wanted with them?

I just didnt know it yet.

I am a fifth graders heart
that beats five times heavier
than healthy.
Being colored in
with too deep a red.

I'm filling up
like a landfill.
My heart has reached a
stand still.
And I'm starting to think that maybe,

Maybe a square peg can find comfort
in a round hole.
Julie Grenness Nov 2015
A long, long time ago, I can still remember when,
Junk food made me smile,
And I knew if had my chance,
That I could make my fatness dance,
And maybe I was happy for a while.

But McDonald's made me shiver,
With every burger they'd deliver,
Bad news on their doorstep,
I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried,
When  I passed size twenty-five,
But something touched me deep inside,
The day I knocked back obesity fries,
CHORUS.
So, bye, bye McDonald's French fries,
Drove my  chevy away from McDonald's,
didn't have a bevy,
I said goodbye to whiskey and rye,
Singing no more apple pies,
That's the end of obesity fries.....

Did you  go to McDonald's biomes?
Did you know you're  changing your genomes?
Eating all those pesticides?
Now do believe they love you, guys?
Might as well eat dead flies!
And can you change evolution in real time?

Well, I know you're addicted to them,
You'll need more than treadmills in the gym,
Now can't even put on your shoes,
Man, you'll dig the obesity blues,

CHORUS.

I was an obese teenage bronco buck.
Driving to McDonald's in a pickup truck,
But I knew I was out of luck,
The day I ate landfill in those French fries...

I started singing bye, bye obesity fries,
Drove my chevy, had no bevies,
And the burgers were dry,
This is the day I knock back French fries.

CHORUS.
I met a girl who sang the blues,
She'd passed turning size twenty-two,
I asked her if she ate junk food too,
She just smiled and drove away,
I drove down to the store no more,
Where I ate additives years before,
But the junk food store didn't care anyway...

CHORUS
CHORUS....
You wait till you get old! Obesity looms. (not really, I have lost 31 kg. )
Moon Humor Apr 2015
~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin
Quotes from: theguardian.com
spysgrandson Sep 2013
from a distance, I thought
you might be a wolf  
straying from the high country,
confused by the cacophony of scents,
but no,
‘twas my vapid vision, you were  
only a mongrel, perched high on the mound  
the odors of suburban fast food ghosts    
and tuna tins familiar to you  
you stood atop the reeking remnants
your right front paw resting on  
the shredded files of a grand embezzler  
your left rear on the ear of a headless teddy bear  
another on an orange rind until you shifted your weight
and found footing on a crinkled crushed water bottle
one of about…33,448,899 in the heap, or maybe
33,448,900  
and the last on the ubiquitous cell phone
that heard its final voice a fortnight before,
when its master spoke his last light words
before he tossed it into a dark dumpster  
and replaced it with another plastic confessor  
whose fate would ultimately be the same  
after some sublime texting  and sexting
and a few vain words
to other deaf dogs
inspired by a Facebook image of a dog on top of a monstrously large (though colorful) heap of trash at a landfill
Francie Lynch Nov 2014
I've been adding
To my landfill,
All my earthly years;
Backfilling,
Filling spaces,
With blades
And brushed off tears.
The diggers will uncover
Loves that now are cold;
Wrapped as
Memoried mummies,
Alive while I grow old.
Prying spades will
One day dig
My community of graves.
Benson Sep 2017
this
sweet-eyed
breathtaking
catastrophe
of mine

hoarding
clutter to the
ceiling fan,
filling void
somewhat
while
trying to
understand

how involuntarily
she crumples
like paper
littered
on the sidewalk
of my brain,
riddled with
scribbles
and nonsense
words,
her ink
blotted
voice like
feathers
under pressure
being
pressed against
whatever

white knuckles
her neck
and
hot talk
from
cold chests.
ingenious
security

boarded up doors
and
one-way glass
windows
to
watch
from inside.

for a moment
she calls
out to me from the
woodwork.
she almost
reaches
for the lock,

she almost becomes more than just paper
for you.
Daylight 4U2C May 2014
I was deep in lucid sleep.
You fed me food doctor told me not to eat.
I didn't question,
but your motives to myself.
A landfill of poison,
and you mean it all for me.
Each rose another thorn,
each bite another death.
I was deep in lucid sleep.
My innocence I must keep,
is led astray for just on night.
Here I, to live, must fight.
I was going to write about a bad dream I had, but I ended up going in a different direction.
Arpita Banerjee Jan 2017
The horizon lies asleep in a grey blanket
In a sea of myriad figures,
And an unimaginable silhouette.
The engineering of black feathers,
Sets ablaze hazy azure weathers.
The Art Decorates Towers,
Like giants with arms outstretched,
Look down commanding superiority
Over the volatile beauty of the wretched.

Who branded this Pandora’s Box to be garbage?
Stop turning your faces away
Like this is some butchery,
Or an abhorable carnage.
The dogs have repeatedly protested against the injustice
The heavy wind suppresses their voices and entices
A seduction of inarticulate silence.
Brothers who embrace us,
Have known nothing of such malices’.

Only the birds are left unenchanted;
Because they fly too high to be pervaded.
I hear children’s voices
And mothers’ too,
And taste the flies and insects,
And all the devils they shoo;
Because they understand not the complexities of a civilization,
They have never rendered their thoughts,
Never undergone no filtration.
The unconquerable spirit of this world,
Has made them savage,
Their claws curled.
In the heat, in the light,
In the plight
Which brings the cold night.

The sunlight here is too dense to penetrate,
Therefore it unabashedly spills over,
No opening,
Just a gateless emptiness on which to concentrate,
Lives and lives here,
Forever proliferate.
With none to remember their faces,
And no mortal soul to commemorate.

Dust settles upon the fingertips which talk.
This place is deemed unfit,
Unsuitable for a walk.
Yet birds, animals and humans alike,
Have stated their preference of what they like.
This land is perpetually theirs to ****.
Passion resides here,
In this unintended landfill.
This poem is based on the encroachment of spaces by informal settlements. This is also a testament to how the organisms which by virtue of their illegitimate occupation transmute themselves into rightful owners of space.
Steve D'Beard Nov 2012
Epilogue:


The relentless tick of time
Changes things forever.

Stand on a piece of common ground
Look around and remember
Saturday afternoon outdoor charades
The local bring-and-swipe carnival-theft parade!
a spectacle event for all the family to enjoy.

“Come round for your tea” is how it often started:
Then sometime after you leave
The wee cousin Billy
does a quick shimmy
up a 200 foot drainpipe
In through the window, out through your front door
Shortly that fancy new recliner you’ve been bragging about
wont be there any more.

Not unlike tribes of indigenous peoples
they never took more than they could carry
and appreciated the karma of their actions on the jungle.
It would happen to them next week anyway
Till then at least, they had ownership of new leather recliner

People change shape and move places
Old is replaced with the new
Angry youths become middle-aged men with jobs,
carrying children with smiles on their faces

The big blocks were eventually torn down one by one
Nearly all that I remember is gone.
The wall tiles etched with a secret love
Have no place any more
Just junk messages littering another landfill

I spare a thought for the lovers
Did they ever get it on?
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2018
.does the concept of a misnomer, exist, within the confines of synonyms?

                       poets began complaining:
if we're not rewriting
         the brother grimms'
fairy tales...
   we're writing: about reading...
so what the hell
is up with the modern revamping
of journalism?
  journalism about...
journalism?
   and this legalißation of
homosexuality...
and the standardißing of
of transgenderißm?
i'm living inside a society,
that has abolished the concept
of the asylum...
      and i'm like:
oi! garçon! noch eine tee
   für mich...
             an dis verrückt
                  engländerteeparty!
- since writing about reading
is the consequence of
a landfill site ergonomics...
what is alt and Samson
journalism?
            oh look... another set
of people, who've entered
a problematic posit of plagiarism,
having to wrestle with,
yet another cul de sac scenario...
the nuestasi...
      i agree, there's a healthy
canvas of competition...
but... after a while?
  it's basically people slagging
each other off...
    journalists "doing" journalism
for the front-liners -
journalism as simply
     the editorial sections
of newspapers...
     opinion avenues, rubrics...
there's no longer a journalism
within the regards of:
what's happening in the world...
but...
  there's a journalism,
within the confines of:
what's happening in journalism...
the day had to come,
when the times newspaper...
had to run a page 2 story...
about a Toff Tinder dating app.,
about pseudo-eugenics -
minus the strict Nazis,
and more:
   those annoying English
aristocrats,
   who received, much more
than a circumcision when
     ruling over the Indian Raj...
mind you... it always bewildered
me...
   most european languages...
do not actually allow noun ascription
to letters...
   like the greeks might with
O being omicron,
   or A being alpha...
    hence me, among the "losers"...
well... because i have
a roof over my head,
and there actually exists a class
of employed
people in england,
that are, nonetheless, homeless!
    the latin alphabet,
with its Ah Be(e) Ce(e)...
                      ****...
just before they cut his ***** off,
the castrato at the Vatican: sang!
sang! ****** sang like a
Modena tenor... having his *****
squeezed, before having them cut off...
sung the alphabet...
   and... couldn't fathom
ascribing a noun... to a single letter
in the encoding metric...
            no surprises...
but it's not like tyrants didn't
need eunuchs to keep harems...
back when the plastic industry
wasn't in full swing...
   and you wanted to keep 200 women...
you basically needed walking ******
to keep the women occupied...
     so... a walrus bollocking
within the grasp of a, "sudden"
loss of stamina?
                 evolved...
like a tree made into a toothpick...
because... only some make
it into the kingdom of god,
imitating the monogamy of
the nobles, that are... notably swans...
the concept of
     widowhood exists among
swans...
                 sometimes...
among people...
        but hell...
                      this Bulgarian
******* asked me:
do you have a girlfriend?
   nope.
              - and the "affair" was over
within the confines of an hour...
the same emotional investment
as one might take...
   in killing a mosquito -
   omni corpus - nulla cor vel mens...
was that said, plaintively?
not really...
              no bogus drama -
   the sheep was still intact,
when the wolf left, satiated.
madeline may Jul 2013
he fell for a girl
mourning the heartbreak of a boy
who fell for a friend
to the tune
of a broken lovesong
"wipe away your tearstains
I thought you said you didn't feel pain"
-landfill, daughter
Katlyn Orthman Aug 2014
Take the dreams I once voiced so fondly
Take them and smash them to dust
Take those moments my heart was pounding
Take them for I know you must

Sweep them under the rug and forget them
Sweep them away without a thought
Sweep them so far I won't be tempted
Sweep them away like you were taught
Sara L Russell Oct 2013
(a satirical pop at the Illuminati)*

It's time to slay fatted consumer cows
It's time to fumigate the Great Unwashed;
To sow mutation's seeds behind the ploughs
To see the dullard's dreams forever quashed.

How movingly they pray not to be harmed!
How doggedly they work to make a wage!
How prettily they line up to be farmed,
Yet, how they long to be at centre stage!

The Useless Eaters eat their pizzas deep,
Their double fries and creamy mayonnaise;
Produce only some methane while asleep,
And fodder for landfill, throughout their days.

It's time for the superiors to win;
Unleash the virus, let the cull begin.
helena ferpin Sep 2015
Pour me some wine
******* some smoke
I can't do it, it's too messy

You kiss my legs
I can't resist it
I pull you close
You push me out

Repeat.

It's complicated!
You get too close
I kiss your lips
Confusion

Conclusion?

It's okay now
You can let me in
While I push you out

Love, love me!
Please disappear
I need you here

Get out of here
I need you so
We're so scandalous

It got too messy
You said we're done
I pushed you too much

I never wanted that bus to come
I never wanted to say goodbye
Andrew Rueter Nov 2017
If you were reincarnated as an animal
Knowing everything you do now
Would you treat humans differently than animals already do?
Or would you bite the hand that beats?
Or would you bite the mouth that eats?
Would you treat humans kindly?
That could be a bullet finding

I come across a shivering raccoon
Stuck inside a winter monsoon
It's too young to survive
I could help I surmise
Its coat can't protect its form
In my car it's nice and warm
But I don't understand the raccoon
And I fear it doesn't understand me
Though I'm not proud of it
I travelled around it

Mosquitoes want your blood to survive
The same way I want your love to arrive
There's a pestering orbit
Your teeth grind and grit
I feel the need to feed
I am overcome by greed
I want you inside me
So I insert my proboscis
And you turn into colossus
It's an animal process
When you squash us

So animals grow stingers
And poison that lingers
When we use our fingers
To smash them
And detach them
From our humanistic existence
They have a reproductive resistance
So we keep fighting
And they keep biting
Because there's no end in sight
When we see animals take flight

We define anything different as animal
This is our excuse to act tyrannical
They feel our wrath
When they're in our path
We turn them into roadkill
This world becomes a landfill
Our hollowed humanity on the shelf
We treat animals as we treat ourself
Can be found in my self published poetry book “Icy”.
https://www.amazon.com/Icy-Andrew-Rueter-ebook/dp/B07VDLZT9Y/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Icy+Andrew+Rueter&qid=1572980151&sr=8-1
Bruce Adams Jul 2019
She collected lolly sticks,
        The ones with jokes on them:
        Why did the chicken cross the road?-type stuff,
Which she stained brown and used as floorboards
in her magnum opus.

The Tudor house was the best one.
It had servants’ quarters
And a kitchen with little hessian potato sacks made
of something or other she salvaged from
somewhere or other;
And the floorboards looked so real:
        painted lolly sticks
        but almost evoking the smell of varnish,
        layers of polish on a floor trodden by centuries
        in perfect miniature;
                                                Almost­.

This was the last of the three
                                                or four
                                                        doll­s’ houses she built;
The devil’s work for her idle widow’s hands.
She built this one while you were entering your final
        stalemate
that doomed dance that sits so permanently
on your conscience
like a sack of compost
full of water.
        (I choose this simile only because
        I found this in my garden yesterday,
        and it was ******* heavy.)
On paper it was simple:
        You gave her your house,
        She gave you hers.

And so her house shrunk around her and
became a dolls’ house of your own making,
Irrationally
                        she saw your god-hands reaching in
to manipulate and
extort her.

She was wrong, of course.

You were making good on your promise.
You would come through for her in her frailty.
You did – but

it was a promise you made more to yourself than her,
And she let her illogical mind
        never analytical to begin with
        now razed and blinded by grief and loneliness
                        (there was nothing to work with)
poison your good deed,
you were both dolls now.

Eight years later she died lovelessly.

She retreated into her sitting room
        the only part of the house that stayed the same
        after you moved in –
                the walls closed in to contain it
                constrict it
a hospital bed and vinyl chair with commode,
and the brown laminate floor
        just like
        her lolly sticks.

You administered painkillers
Admitted the nurses
Negotiated with your estranged brother.

but her paranoia rotted everything
and your hands cared with compassion but not love.

Gone, now,
the dolls’ houses remain.
An inheritance of clutter
in a house you bought.

You answer the phone
                                        breathlessly
      ­                                  aggressively.
You have been heaving the big one up the stairs
        that sack of compost
        that heavy conscience of yours.

You will be heaving those ******* dolls’ houses around
until I have to buy your house and care for you.
But I am telling you now:
        I am putting them in a skip
        the moment I have the chance.

They are not imbued with the joy they gave her
any more than
                        by keeping them safe from landfill
                        you can imbue them with the love you withheld.

They are painted lolly sticks and sewn hessian.
They don’t contain any more of her
than the bits of paper she kept
        passwords and bank balances
        dates and instructions for the Sky box
There is nothing left of her to protect now.

Open up the hinged false front,
                tip out the miniatures
                let the little figures be free,
                                be landfill
                                (isn’t that what dying is anyway?)
all the tangible things she touched and loved
are not avatars for her touch and her love.

The past is not present through the preservation of objects.
The past is not erased by the advancement of time
                nor can it be undone by corrective action.

Now she is on the other side of the road,
        (why did the chicken
        behave.)
She has no further use for the things she left behind.
Dr Peter Lim Jun 2019
Don't you in contempt dump
my affection in some landfill
love didn't do you any wrong
you could walk away but never ****--

hearts that had loved once
even in sorrow should bear no ill
I look forward to no happy outcome
but only bid to remain remorseless and still.
* after John Keats,  John Clare and Christina Rossetti
Chantelle Jun 2012
A heart that's filled up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us
I'll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide
No alarms, and no surprises
No alarms, and no surprises
Silent
Silent
-Radiohead
ching Jan 2012
Amongst the dirt and browned over rainbows;
a flower grows.
As vibrant as any; manifestation through darkness.
Light through dark, dark through light.
The only way.
Third Eye Candy Sep 2012
the grass, leaning in the south wind , seeming
              as if emeralds,   had sent tendrils up
              to suckle at the yellow breast, now,   high above     inflamed....
              over soft new
              grass  
            
              like
              strands of green gemstone,
              as delicate as humming-bird tongues
              teasing nectar
              from a titan,
              in the sky
                        
              triumphant in the void,

              a golden bead in the baffling blue !

              cattails, curling in sway...and two brown eyes bob upon the surface
                          of a myriad fertilities.
              as if
                        nature itself had known, one day
                       a poet would come ~
              to roam the rambling renascence of these remote ramparts
                     in awesome humility ~ and so prepared
              a path afflux
                that ambled near

              and yes !

              an
                        anonymous nomad
              with nicotine skin and a scabbard of scandalous quills
              would indeed
              stumble in      as if returning home
              to a mansion restored to glory
              and seraphic randomness....
              a place
              that in youth, sustained a quiet, soulful troubadour
              by gospels of granite and grain,  grass finch
              and faun - ennobling an oracle ... but now
              enticed a scholar  from his cot
              to jot ephemera
              of outlasting spark
              before dark-fall

        
              and so... there

              amid all allurement   and soft machines

              a word-smith gathered
              poesy and prose.
            
              muse-driven
              this one served
              an invisible
              sovereign
            
              one  

              of unsurpassed virility
              who charms       kaleidoscopes
              with  offhand sketches    
              rescued
              from
              a landfill
            
              a basket weaver,  
              that unravels to
              achieve pure
              forms
            
              a wineskin was decanted in dianthus and hollies -
              as ampules of anagrams
              were sold unscrambled, to dyslexics
              without hope
            
              a falcon   frolicked above the lowborn lilies...  
            
              with eyes  
              too keen
              to see a
              blur
              as the hand
              of god
            
              or a vole
            
              as a lifeline
              on his
              palm.
some aesthetic modifications and heartfelt snipping. like a bonsai. i like it better.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.penta - come in: like i said, horror movie soundtracks, i fall asleep listening to them... they're so atmospheric i, simply can't resist their inherent allure.

the infamous Croydon cat killer...
i'm not buying what the media is selling...
i'm currently in the possession
of a quasi-pet...
  a fox...
comes round my garden for food,
leftovers...
which i give to him with overcooked
rice...
      no... i'm not buying the police report...
two reason...
you know where Croydon is...
and when the next incident happened?
north east London...
   did the fox... ******* swim?!
a fox is not a migratory animal...
   it's niche...
   it's local...
   if it has a sustained food source...
scavenger that it is...
omnivore like a petted dog...
  no...
i don't buy it...
              why would it transverse
south west London and strike in
north east London...
    did Herr Fusch
and why were the bodies left as evidence?
this fox has a *******
fetish for cranium meat or something?
i'm no Mr. Softie for the company
of a fox...
     but on the outskirts of London...
cats and foxes share a strange
   symbiosis...
   ever walk the dark Essex roads
at night, and peer into the fox
and the house-cat look at each other with
curiosity?
      like all serial killers...
it begins with animals,
there's always the audacity with animals...
most of them would probably become
model citizens, if they were allowed
a job at a slaughter house...
   so the mainstream media explains
the Croydon cat killer as a fox...
a fox that decapitates a body...
   and doesn't eat the torso?!
******* magic!
that's not how mature nature of
the wild works: you either eat...
or you're eaten..
        my neighbors owned ducks...
you think that when a fox
dug a hole beneath the cage...
there was a duck torso and a missing
duck head?
ha ha! good luck!
       why would a wild animal **** something...
and not eat it?
    a Swizz fondu makes more sense
than this explanation!
no cautionary animal,
that is primarily a scavenger,
travels from south west London
to north east London...
             BULL...****...
       BULL... ****!
           i don't feed my Brody because
i think he's cute...
   i feed him...
     because i randomly feel like it...
do foxes even own the concept
of a head terrine delicacy?
   my little ******* will eat
rice mingling with off-cuts of meat
and fat...
           so... he bit the head off...
but left the torso for evidence?!
BULL... ****...
oh i'm pretty sure a shy, a very shy
bored Jimmy is lurking in the shadows...
shy bored Jimmies need
a canvas of innocence...
animals are their primal choice...
  well... considering that Cain
was a vegetarian and Abel wasn't...
          he's lying low...
he needs to wake up from the adrenaline
rush...
   he needs for it to cool down...
a fox doesn't leave torso evidence...
and what would be the point of...
   did they say whether the heads
were guillotined, or chewed off?
no ******* animal chews off a head,
unlikely for an animal
to decapitate another animal...
   only human imagination provides that
sort of ingenuity...
         crock ****... basic crock ****...
blame the foxes...
     ha ha!
find me this shadowy little Jimmy before
he boasts about
the human sin of being gullible....
thank **** i'm not a campaigner...
   what i do with "my" fox is concerned
with ecological advantages...
also something akin
  to a Monday morning...
and how my neighbor's trash isn't littered
over the road... because
the wolf was fed, and so the sheep
too...
                 there is no logic to
the claim that a fox made methodological
killings of pets...
   if you ever walked
the streets at night,
and watched the stare-off between
a fox and a cat...
   last time i checked:
   cats have claws and a ferocious bite...
foxes? no claws...
just the bite...
oh, right... what am i listening to?
    penta -            come in...
   i'm still thinking of little Jimmy in the shadows,
collecting his decapitated
   cat heads... and stuffing them
with fiddles of a post-scriptum
to the Hollywood movie genre...
   oh believe me...
from what i heard of Eddie the Gain...
20th century alternative culture
was basically him
being covertly cited...
            no...
a fox wouldn't do it...
   if it was a a duck / chicken affair...
sure...
   but cats being decapitated...
and the torsos left as evidence,
i.e. not being eaten?
         little Jimmy is taking a break...
given that: i'm pretty sure a Bonsai
tiger knows a few tricks about
how a predator defends himself...
          then again, the explanation
could be:
  too many cat videos...
             cats aren't cute...
they're bogus critters who are in
the potential of biting and scratching...
come one...
all the way from south west London...
to north east London?!
foxes don't travel that far,
and the closest route would be
by a hypotenuse vector...
   sooner proving Santa Claus
exists...
    and...
              it couldn't be the same fox...
wild animals are analogous...
but they're certainly not original copy-cats...

coming from a newspaper
like the times:
   i'm vaguely allured to claim them
left-leaning... right-centrist for sure...
but they're still quasi-Guardian
types...

the topic at hand came,
thanks to no. 10,154 sudoku puzzle...
and the narrative...

1    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    5
0    5   ­ 0    0    2    0    0    3    0
0    4    0   6    0    5    0    1    0
0    0    2   0    0    0    8    0    0
0    0    5    4    0    3    7    0  ­  0
0    3    0    5    0    2    0    6    0
0    6    0    8   ­ 0    1    0    9    0
5    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    1
­0    7    0    0    6    0    0    4    0

ut 10,153 was a mess...
i can only suppose it was too simple...

let's just say i had to think
of something,
esp. little Jimmy...
    
                        and the scapegoat fox...
after all: it's the easiest route...
   pretending that a wild
animal is to behave in a civilized manner...
but even wild animals
do not behave like
meticulous killers...
          and decapitation?
it an example of a civilized
meticulousness of a killing...
        
i sniff a rat, a see a rat...
             mainstream media is a load
of *******, and hardly an outrage
of der stimme...
    
foxes don't assert methodological killings...
little Jimmy... whittle Jimmy...
taking a break...
having made foundation
in the first membrane of audacity...
sooner or later...
little Jimmy is moving from cats,
and into the territory of humans...

they all do...
  "they"?
        serial killers!

          that wasn't a fox...
i'm petting a fox at this moment in time...
well.. petting is a lose term...
otherwise strapped to:
"petting"...

           but as you do... solving a sudoku...
here's the linear
narrative:

   (b) 8 8 1 1 3 4 7 9 7 7 9 9 4 9 7 9 4 7
(a) 1 1 5 5 5 1 6 6 7 7 8 2 3 4 9 6 6 6 8 2 3 2 4 4 8 3 9 3 9 2 3 2 2 8 8

and you do think up crazy ****
while you're at it...

1    2    6    9    3    8    4    7    5
7    5    8    1­    2    4    9    3    6
3    4    9   6    6    5    2    1    8
4    1    2   7    9    6    8    5    3
6    8    5    4    1    3    7    2  ­  9
9    3    7    5    8    2    1    6    4
2    6    4    8   ­ 5    1    3    9    7
5    9    3    2    4    7    6    8    1
­8    7    1    3    6    9    5    4    2

but then the everyday newspaper
you read on the everyday
from Monday to Friday....
and there's a newspaper magazine...
ah...
   so that's the problem...
i'm not bundled up in a demographic
nearing retirement age?!

the Croydon cat-killer is still out there...
  a fox wouldn't leave a decapitated
torso as evidence...

as the one simple rule of nature suggests:
NATURE DOESN'T BELIEVE
IN LANDFILL SITES...
IT BELIEVES IN RECYCLING...
a fox that chews off a head
of a cat, and doesn't drag the torso into
the forest to eat?
   well... let's just suppose
that idiocy doesn't exactly permeate
in the wild...
              less a stupid animal...
more a selfish / slothful animal...
  foxes are neither...

             little Jimmy is still out there...
with his love for souvenirs of
cat heads...
           and he's buying time...
so a scapegoat emerges...
  
        if a fox did what was "supposedly" done...
i'm pretty sure there would be
no evidence...
          left...

you get the picture?
  Michael Myers began experiments
on animals... as did Jeffrey Dahmer with
road-****...
                can't someone make an outlet
for these people to work
in slaughterhouses?!
                    they'd be perfect!

decent human beings:
in the most indecent human conditions -
and i'm pretty sure these guys
would love working
in the slaughterhouses...

  i could, for some reason,
forget vegetarians akin to Adolf ******
by then!
SassyJ Jan 2016
Patterned dots, existence connects
An anther to a stigma, reproduction
The pollen withers, pollution subsides
Colonies of bees vanish in the wind
Toxic genetic food wins in binge

Mother earth cries in pain, an ail
Food chains and supplies cut short
Globalised mass production of poison
Supermarkets stocking “all season”
Consumerism monopolies swell

The environment abused and misused
Plastic bottles displaced, a chemical sludge
The haunted “great pacific garbage patch”
Littered garbage, debris and chemical sludge
Humanity displaced, dissociated and divided
Ruining sea waters , floating landfill fueled

Probability of heightened population
Global panics, mimicked maniacs
Reductions of resources to feed all
Unsustainable long windy farms
Big roads, buried bills, stingy reality
We are connected to every elephant that stamps, every bird that flies and every bee that buzzes. As peculiar as this may be it is so true. In the last 15 years the bee population is diminishing/ disappearing! It may seem far-fetched but it is true and relevant. They call it CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Initially, they blamed it on pesticides but this can only affect 1/3 of the population. Some scientists blame it on genetically modified crops as they might have toxics that poison the bee. But this has got a great effect on the food chain.

Such trends identify immense threat. Globalisation has meant that we have "all season" food.... you can get what you want... when you want it. Is our consumerism mode to blame? Have our reckless outlook in life lead to "the great pacific garbage patch"?

The world population is on the increase currently at 7.3 billion and projected to be 9.7 billion in 2050. Have we got enough resources in mother earth? Have we abused and used her? It's a long long road, the windy path... the stingy reality.
ZWS Sep 2014
Why do I care about geography when I just want to find another planet
Planet earth is nothing more than news
I want to move forward, I want to know why
I'm sick of all the politicians and war, have we forgotten why we're here
Have we forgotten what we've never known
Or does the thought just make us feel more alone
Your god has not shown
Maybe he's making planets elsewhere
Maybe he's given up on us
Maybe the the only thing left is boiling beneath earth's crust
Kyle White Dec 2011
Naked, flaccid, wasted...
watching the Sunset
swallowed by a landfill

The machinery has since
fallen asleep
the insects have now
taken back the silence

My mind is bankrupt
I owe
more than I own

The hourglass is a sandbag
with a bayonet tear
leaking grains

My poems are parrots
on the shoulders
of greater influence



*This poem is about drinking in a trailer by a landfill.
Claire Waters Nov 2013
you cry like lost toys and dead pets
there's nothing you can do about it right now
you cry like a small animal with a broken spinal chord
you keep whimpering, but it can only heal in time
you cry like pressing the skin of your palms
into the membranes of your eyes

when everything in your head is so cacophonous
you want to rub away all the little things you absorb
want that your hands could throw out this migraine
like a candy wrapper on the sidewalk
and if you believe hard enough that it's gone
you'll never notice the sugar rush or the comedown
so you press your hands to your face
as hard as you can and try to pray like a religious person
but you were raised christian and american and
the ways of believing and hoping and loving that you knew as a child
seem insincere now, and hard to speak
the language is not truthful
everything is what they told you it was not
nothing is what they told you it was
or everything was always what it was
and you or i could've told them that

and you think that wrapper might eventually end up in a landfill
if you go throwing it carelessly around
and sadness taken with too much sugar can be a toxic combination
so maybe making the bad things go away
is harder than throwing away the wrapper and enjoying the rush
maybe the wrapper is somewhere else now you can't get to
where you can't hear it crinkle or see it shrivel,
but you can still relentlessly feel it
getting whittled away by time and weather
while steadily melting down bits of you
as you pass your heart around
gasping inside the icebox

until one day you look up and the sun is a bloodier color
and your lungs are full of ice like pins
freezing inside of you
and when seconds before you had oxygen
as you begin choking, you think it's amazing how long
it seems to have been
since you were alive

your knuckles are dry from holding on
to a rusty ladder wrung
even when you want to move so badly
and there's nowhere to climb
you refuse to jump
and you're still trying to figure out
how to fall correctly
to break the least amount of limbs
The odors of an open landfill rise up from my gaping mouth.
If fifty miles out, you smell it, stinking as it will,
one hundred lie that you must drive before, beyond the fetid
tickle of a foul doubt, your nausea will settle and will die
in shrinking throes. And then another one, and still
another comes and goes.  I sense the every stinking swath of bile
and swarming offering tossed into me from such passers-by--
but I feel nothing satisfy (ironically or otherwise)
the open landfill of my gut.  A hole no less am I when stuffed.
(c) K.E. Parks, 2012

Neither less am I a wound if sewn
nor any less a cake if cut.
No more am I a door when open;
no less am I one when shut.
st64 Jul 2016
Little Box talks back
With a new set of teeth
And pink gums
A fake nose and a wax mustache
She disguises her voice
To sound like Groucho
  


Little Box opens up
And cries to her psychiatrist
I don’t know why they hate me
I’m such a sweetheart
I volunteer at the zoo
And teach Mandarin
To their bratty children



Little Box is not happy to see you
So she closes herself up for months
Years, decades, and two millennia!
She tacks up a sign that says
Nirvana



Little Box is undead
She sleeps all day in a coffin
Hands over chest
At night she cruises the mall
For juicy victims

She prefers type A
But AB if she has to
What can you say
Vampires can’t be choosy
She likes your stupid brother



Little Box is on the psychiatry couch
Everybody hates me
Nobody loves me
Little Box lies on her side
And spills her guts



What’s in Little Box
A perfect orchid
A chocolate-covered strawberry
A new iPhone
With a glittery sleeve
Amber earrings from Pushkin

Keys to a new Porsche
A retro Chanel brooch
A Getty scion’s left ear
A Czar’s *****
Gifts so rare
Please don’t stare



What’s in Little Box
Rancid chow mein
A sliver of cold pizza
Last week’s hummus
You’re a starving orphan
From East Brooklyn
And you’ll eat it



So you want to **** Little Box
You want to know her secret
She won’t open up
She won’t give it up
And you are genuinely repelled
By her filthy ribbon



You want to DO the Little Box
You are a sorry story
You big creep
Why don’t you get off the couch and find
A real girlfriend!



Boss Box
White, square, and without a soul!



Please don’t analyze Little Box
She’s just cardboard clogging the landfill
Her mother Precious Jade Purse
Has been regifted
howdy :)
The hamster walked alone broken hurt and on the verge of ending it all.
The streets of Hello were empty as the head of the *******  who created it .

He just couldn't take it anymore school was driving him nuts  his family were insane and there had to be more to life than sitting in his room on weekends listening to ****** music writing angst driven poetry and ******* to internet ****.
Anymore viruses and his computer was going to be more infected than Katy Perry's rancid crouch .

All hope was lost when he saw it in the parking lot a van  with the words M.R  Gonzo's  advice and free clinic walk-ins and homeless nymphos welcome  .

It sort of looked like a old bookmobile and smelled like a ******* or something that had died in a ******* .

The young misguided hamster figured what the **** did he have to lose so he knocked on the door .
It swung open as a cloud of smoke poured out the door it looked like a scene from towering inferno or Willie Nelsons tour bus  .

After hacking up half a lung and getting a contact high a face of true poetic brilliance emerged from haze of smoke .
And the young hamster was looking straight at the  one the only the often perverted cult leader of Hello Gonzo.

Hey there amigo **** bud you don't know how glad I am to see you come the **** in .
Saying the that the living legend Of Hello grabbed his school book and vanished into smoky hollow .

The kid sat there awhile not knowing if he should run or follow this nut job .
Well that is until a hand reached through the fog and pulled him in.

What the **** kid your wasting a great buzz you know how long it took me to get this bake going in here have a ******* seat.
The inside of the place looked like some cross between a Pub and a bad seventies ****  minus the  ugly chicks with cracked out faces and Chewbacca between there legs .

Ummm maybe I should leave .
The kid said scared of this scene and the mad hatter of a person sitting with a stiff drink in hand a umm well lets just say a herbal cigar in the other .

Bud you need to relax I tell ya  I got the munchies from hell .
With that said he took a bite out of the text book.
Jesus Christ this **** tastes more and more like cardboard dude I aint paying for this ****** .

Umm I'm not a pizza delivery guy and that's my math book ******* .
Yeah of course I knew that im just ******* with you sparky .
Okay man fifty bucks .

What?
The young hamster was convinced this guy was totally insane .
Fifty buck's for what ?

Duh Fifty for the **** ******* what you really think anyone would come here for ******* life advice from me?
I mean sure I'm ******* awesome as **** I do great drugs I drink more  than a fish and chicks dig me I mean sure you don't see any around that's just cause there on a break man I'm kind of finding myself .
You know just me my drugs and the wilderness .

Okay that explains why this place looks like you live in it there's a stack of **** movies that looks like you raided a wharehouse and your parked in a vacant lot in the city.

Yeah well least Im not some kid selling terrible pizza's that taste like paper oh yeah your late bud so this ones on the house .

I'm not a pizza boy you crazy old ******* !

Taking a long pause the artist formerly known as Gonzo was dead silent .

You have a point pizza boy who am I kidding I live in a kickass converted bookmobile  where I basically sell dope  to little ***** looking to get high and hopefully get to see some ******* in between
and you my wise public servant of terrible tasting pizza are yet living a existence of misery selling **** for us stoners to stuff are wasted faces with.

Dude are you ******* nuts I'm not a pizza delivery boy I'm just a young writer looking for advice .
The  young hamster went into his whole tale woe how nobody liked him and he was being picked on by ******* jocks who seven years from now would working the same dead end job as himself jerking off to old game video's well the ones that didn't make it to the NFL and had super model ****** blowing them while they watched old game videos that is .


He rambled on as the wise slightly ****** and definitely drunk wizard of Gonz pretending to care and listen  much like he did to chicks he was trying to get lucky with.

You know Gonzo your really ******* weird but man I feel better .
I bet you were once just like me a outcast loser wimp who was deeply sensitive  and yearned for the love of another.


He just stayed silent  sitting across from the table a wise man hidden behind dark glasses and  madness .

So what do I owe you man ?
Umm Gonzo  man are you lost in thought or something ?

The young dork had just bared his angst ridden soul and now he thought to himself **** man I think it was to much for him no wonder he's gone insane from listening to my ******* .

It felt like a hour as he kept trying to get the poet known as Gonzo to respond .

He was about to get off his **** and shake him when a noise more fowl than Justin Biebers  voice broke the silence .

It was the biggest and longest  **** he had ever herd and smelled almost as bad as gonzo's demented long winded jokes .

Finally he showed signs of life oh dude I forgot to tip you so sorry **** I had the best  sleep of my life your better than listening to the newest Taylor Swift cd  hell I was like in a coma dam did you **** in here I swear you kids and your silly pranks it's okay kid I swiped your wallet.  
You wont believe the **** I can pull when your asleep.


So you mean this whole time I been spilling my heart out to you thinking we were really becoming friends you were ******* asleep!?

Like a drunken baby after a good binge  in the trailer park amigo .

**** this !!

With that the young miserable moody *** teen hamster was gone and again gonzo was left to his thoughts to reflect on maybe he should have.
Aww **** that **** he said and cracked another fifth of bourbon and turned on some first class **** I'm talking bout the evening news hamsters get your minds out of the gutter.

Sure life can be total **** look at mine it's like a landfill of ******* crap.
But instead of being emotional *****.
I do what any grown man who lives a mobile bar does   .

Drink my liver silly and party my **** off writing ****** misspelled things to make people laugh and get hamsters to show me there ******* duh I'm just like Shakespeare  minus the talent and funny dungeons and dragons voice .

Until next time kids stay crazy.

Gonz
Third Eye Candy Sep 2011
the grass, leaning in the south wind , seeming
              as if emeralds,   had sent tendrils up
              to suckle at the yellow breast, now,   high above     inflamed....
              over soft new
              grass  
            
              like
              strands of green gemstone,
              as delicate as humming-bird tongues
              teasing nectar
              from a titan,
              in the sky
                        
              triumphant in the void,

              a golden bead in the baffling blue !

              cattails, curling in sway...and two brown eyes bob upon the surface
                          of a myriad fertilities.
              as if
                        nature itself had known, one day
                       a poet would come ~
              to roam the rambling renascence of these remote ramparts
                     in awesome humility ~ and so prepared
              a path afflux
                that ambled near

              and yes !

              an
                        anonymous nomad
              with nicotine skin and a scabbard of scandalous quills
              would indeed
              stumble in      as if returning home
              to a mansion restored to glory
              and seraphic randomness....
              a place
              that in youth, sustained a quiet, soulful troubadour
              by gospels of granite and grain,  grass finch
              and faun - ennobling an oracle ... but now
              enticed a scholar  from his cot
              to jot ephemera
              of outlasting spark
              before darkfall

        
              and so... there

              amid all allurement   and soft machines

              a word-smith gathered
              poesy and prose.
            
              muse-driven
              this one served
              an invisible
              sovereign
            
              one  

              of unsurpassed virility
              who charms       kaleidoscopes
              with  offhand sketches    
              rescued
              from
              a landfill
            
              a basket weaver,  
              that unravels to
              achieve pure
              forms
            
              a wineskin was decanted in dianthus and hollies -
              as ampules of anagrams
              were sold unscrambled, to dyslexics
              without hope
            
              a falcon   frolicked above the lowborn lilies...  
            
              with eyes  
              too keen
              to see a
              blur
              as the hand
              of god
            
              or a vole
            
              as a lifeline
              on his
              palm.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
the world according, to a star-studded journalist -
writing the magazine Saturday column, a she, mind you,
all learned about seeing the world: well, only New York -
she's hip! she's funny! she's downright a prop'ah scumbag -
and i say: the iron curtain should have turned into an iron skirt...
but then Pope Jean-Claude von ****, the second, opened up
the brothel... i too would have liked a ****...
but hell, it was always going  to be a bony **** at best...
raise a family? REJECT! they think their post-colonialism is an
affair of scented parchments of hope, what they did in Africa,
they're suddenly doing in Europe... shush-bags of wisdom,
let's get the house in order: i'm a perverted snail, i **** toads for
practice, i ***** out salty ***** on the rotunda circuit of cries:
justice! justice! well, if ever i spotted a deaf ear, it'd be now.
so there she is lazing about with a column on Saturday,
and she drops the New-Irish words: and M & S, buying swimwear,
hoping for a Burkini... the lighting and the flooring gave the place
an unhappy, postwar, eastern European (a new continent, mind you)
vibe. i half-expected a forklift truck to drive past me,
delivering potatoes to some far corner's "thursday potato display -
sprouted ones half price." out of the blue a leprechaun jumps out,
a real ventriloquist by trade, and does a rendition of that famous
song: we all eat potatoes here, nothing but *** *** potatoes!
tra lala la. this fetish in western society, potatoes: the famous mash
and chips... cabbage... and the famous coleslaw...
eastern Europe: land of landfill sites and mountains
of potato... which magically turn into lakes of *****...
and cabbage... i got to know more about the world by being
half the tourist i was supposed to be... and half of what integrating /
assimilating into a host culture allowed: St. George can
hang a ****** on the washing line, and Lizzy can shave her head...
     i'm a patriot of language,
simple as, a patriot of language,
not a patriot of the culture that incubated the language...
first of all check-out North Korean propaganda films,
second of all ask why you received the Marshall Plan
funds, inc. Sweden, which was neutral during the war...
then bewilder yourself as to why you're selling us
a farmer's stereotype, but as the grand observation
of the bellybutton suggests: they're the ones stuffing
crisps into buns and eating it with cheese and ham
at every lunch-break... farmer here, farmer there,
******* potato fetishist anywhere...
and you wonder why i retain a patriotism to the language
rather than to the people that speak it...
they didn't make it easy, and they're certainly not
making it any easier... Leprechaun Irish -
potaytoe - potaytoe - potaytoe -
so the expectation is... i'm a slave, you're the master,
i get to visit the opposite of Auschwitz in the cotton
colony? well, at least the existential answer is simple
in Auschwitz - our german brood will do the job more
effectively... we don't need you, off to God you go...
in a cotton colony? our people are superior,
we need slaves to do the work that our people are not fit
to do... and this is diabolical logic, i don't deny it,
but i'd rather be told to die than be told to live and work
for someone's amusement and benefit...
simple... p'ahtaytoe!
                                    it seems that whenever they
came to Poland they only came to Auschwitz, now,
all of a sudden, i'm the collaborating ****,
the stain on Polish soil, as already noted:
Egypt has its pyramids, Poland has German chimneys...
******* choo choo and Thomas the tank engine rolled into town...
how can you ever attempt a full discrete and competent
assimilation / integration when you have to end up
a solitary form of ethnic cleansing, where bilingualism
is treated as a mental illness, and you have to, in effect,
spit at your parents to embrace an English wife,
with an English household, with 42.3% chance of divorce?
what's the ******* point of that? at least in my
culture monogamy had a sense, not here, among
the brutal brats: who rather than having learned to care
for children, after petting an animal, just leave them
like stray wild dogs, not free to roam in forests and
fields, but in angst ridden kennels...
                                       well, Japan is selling me euthanasia,
cos reaching old age was going to be such an achievement,
that everyone started begging for the living standards
akin to Sudan: dead at 40, dead at 40 and nimble.
We had blown through half the ***** and the drugs were nowhere to be found  in this oasis's of debauchery and bad decisions .
Bone had thrown his usual  temper fit and with his spoiled rich boy roots showed his *** in the worst possible way till someone finally shut him the **** up.

And after the ******* dude had knocked my sometimes friend most times pain in my *** sidekick out.
Looking to me in half spent rage and ****** knuckles asking now what the **** are you  going to do?

Well I'm going to have another round and play the jukebox now that someone finally shut that ******* up what you having amigo?
You mean your just going to sit there and let me get away with what I did to your friend that way.

Who that guy in the floor I don't know him.
But you came in here together **** you been sitting here drinking for at least five hours and your telling me you don't know him?

Oh that guy sleeping in a pool of blood in the floor?
Yeah stupid .
Nope never met him but he 's alright sometime when he's not ******* then he's well less a ***** and more just a regular ******* .

What are you ******* with me ******!?

The burly man asked as pure anger flowed like the Rio grand within his eye's
Some people have to build the rage up like some strange volcano to inflict damage on others and some are just ******* by design.
I wasn't sure of this man's type I just knew it was to dam hot to hit the highway and the cervasa was cold the music was right and I had no intention of leaving before my buzz kicked in.

What's to stop me from just kicking your *** like I did this ******* *******  ****** you tell me what's to stop me from taking your money and  rolling your *** right out of this place?

Mexico still bleeds of the past and it's people still show that passion for a good fight that at it's base is the true nature of man .
Not to be some violent nut but the passion for life at it's sharpest and most dangerous edge .

Well my friend I can think of a few reasons and probably none will be that pleasant.

I'm done with your games ****** .
The man moved forward fists clenched ready for round two I suppose
but his eye's sure were shocked when he found a barrel of a gun placed firmly between his eyes.

Now I told you this wasn't going to be pleasant sure you could have sat your angry *** down on a bar stool had a drink or two but no you had to play the ******* when I was just trying to catch a good buzz I swear some people have no manners .

The room went dead silent like some cheap spaghetti western right before someone was about to get killed minus that weird *** music so I guess it wasn't that silent at all as one old man turned his head then just went back to his drink like I don't give a **** as long as he doesn't bother me or make me stop drinking.


Oh **** ****** don't pull that ******* trigger  the man said his rage had turned more into a look of fear or maybe just a look of he just **** his pants honestly what's the difference well minus the smell.

with a gun in one hand and a beer in another I called the bartender down .
Mix me a mist and coke barkeep please.

No Whiskey just tequila senior .
What ! I replied in a fake sort of shock .
I swear no whiskey No women what kind of bar is this place I swear do I have to shoot somebody to get a bottle of whiskey ?

No no ****** the man at the end of the gun pleaded just get him some ******* whiskey Goddamit  he yelled at the bartender.
Really you don't have to be rude oh I'm sorry what's your name I been to busy holding you at gunpoint you must forgive my manners.

My names Gonzo I enjoy killing my liver hookers but only in moderation  like a good Christian  and ballroom dancing .
The man at the end of the boom stick lost all fear at least for a second.
Really ballroom dancing?

I'm kidding bout that one amigo but I do enjoy watching a good pole dancer  high five to that I mean I would  give you a high five if I wasn't holding a gun to your head and all .

Um you ever going to tell me your name bud?
I looked at this now downright scared shitless man who seemed to have a real issue with sweating from the strange puddle on the floor.

I swear you pull a fully loaded pistol on someone and point it to there head and everyone just acts so serious people are so strange these days.

Bill the man with a sweating problem replied.
Bill ?  Really what Mexican is named Bill ?
I mean I come all the  way down here get into some wild west kickass trouble and I find the only Mexican named Bill .
******* Machete you ruined my whole experience of what this was supposed to be like.

Sir. the man tried to speak up behind the  bar.
Don't interrupt me barkeep I'm on a dam roll here duh who you thinks writing this story imaginary person I created within my own demented mind.

You see Bill when I come across the border I expect a few simple things kick *** ****** cheap drinks and badass people like yourself named Razor or Spider  Or  El Nino or some sort of **** is that raciest sure put labels on what we have here amigo but I come for a kickass time in Mexico  and you really well you just killed it so I hope your happy.

I'm so sorry but please don't **** me Bill Replied .
Sir the barkeep spoke up again.

Okay what bartender being my whole trip has been ruined by Mexican Bill who honestly I feel if not for all this gun and life or death **** we could have a true connection but not like in a gone fishing on that mountain **** were those two cowboys corn hole each other  or maybe they just played corn hole once is fine I mean its not like I saw that movie and cried at the end cause duh I would never go see that in some cheap attempt to get laid by my teenage stripper girlfriend yeah don't ask.

Okay barkeep what the hell is it.
Well sir were not in Mexico.
This man was clearly more drunk than I for he didn't know what dam country he was in.

Amigo are you sure you know what your talking about.
Well yeah the barkeep replied your in Busch gardens theme park .
Well that certainly explains the ******* roller coaster and why that woman near it slapped me when I asked how much for a ******* boy do I feel embarrassed.

I knew I shouldn't have had that acid before leaving the house .
I did think it was strange that Germany was within walking distance.

So after nearly giving Mexican Bill a heart attack who was actually was Canada Bill once made me feel a little better because  honestly just for Nickleback and Justin Bieber  was grounds enough to pull a gun on him .

We sat  enjoyed some drinks as Bone laid passed out in the floor and said I don't want to go to school every time I kicked him cause I'm a true **** for a friend duh like you hadn't figured that out.

We laughed we rode rides we beat some dude up in France just because he was French .

And in the parking lot as we said are goodbyes.
I stood there and said you know Bill it's been great sorry bout the whole thinking I was in a foreign country and pulling a gun on you and stuff.

It's cool Gonz sorry about all my ****** music we pollute your airwaves with I know it's like being prison ****** by some dude called Harley .

Well I got to go and Bill  you stay crazy and by the way go take a ******* bath cause you **** your pants and it smells worse than Taylor swifts crouch okay .

Yeah the city landfill doesn't have **** on her .

We parted  are ways drunk and behind the wheel like good Americans .
And if that ****** you off just wait till my next write.

Duh it's just a story *******.
Stay crazy hamsters .

Your captain  

Gonzo
If there is anyone I have neglected to offend please feel free to contact me at.

Shady Pines Mental Facility.
PO box 3   27950
Lucy Tonic Nov 2011
The moon is a disco-ball upon black waters
The sun is a lava-lamp upon our pale backs
Planets are mines for department store jewelry
Hearts are black-lights for otherworldly knick-knacks
Truth is an onion; it peels and makes you weep
Earth is a landfill where bones and secrets sleep

— The End —