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Michael Cyruss Jan 2021
In a window over Mortem Street,
I see the sun with a mouth pursed
In envy of the way that you go around
And glow all the time,

The smallish girl with
Ebony eyes and reddish lips
Which turn the head of every fool,
Myself a fool among them.

In a window over Mortem Street
You can see me here, too,
Looking out on the soft avenue
Made softer by you.

In that window over Mortem Street,
I watched the others smell the roses
And never smelled one.

You deserve every rose,
And maybe I could drop them by one day,
When maybe your glow is low enough
And I can catch your eye in the window.

And maybe Mortem Street
Won’t be so lonely anymore.
Madzq Aug 2014
Lovesick and you've got the cure.
Got all these symptoms. You know what for.
Don't be afraid of this contagious disease,
Just take my requisition form.

I've made room for you in my atria and ventricle.
You're the capillary to my arteriole and venule.
You're the amniotic fluid to the child in my heart.
I find you even in the interstitial parts.

Treatment like uours is like a centrifugAl force.
So be the **** stasis my heart is longing for.
Some homeostasis is what we need.
We will make compromises to succeed.

Lay me supine and you in prone.
Sensory neurons fire
Exocrine glands make to pressure
Spark endocrine glands to hear you moan.

Without your heart I'd be anemic.
Withiutbyour arms I'd be half a paraplegic.
Your kisses give me air, without them I'm cyatonic.
You're the fibrin in my veins, to my pain an anesthetic.

I'm ready for some long-term care and affection.
Got a chronic condition that needs your attention.
I k now I'm concluded, parts of me sclerosed.
Don't wait post mortem to know that you're the most.
I wrote this for my partner as a way to help me memories my medical terminology.
harvey Mar 2014
you're like lavender hills
and tropical skies
the words between my lips
and the warmth between my thighs
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
where was i? right, anywhere but here,
listening to some medieval music,
i sometimes sit in one place,
fade, and then find myself sitting
in the same place with a question
on the tip of my tongue: where am i?!

hard not to notice:
heaven reigns supreme with
a "st." michael coming down
with the sword...
depiction, please!
where's satan?
  coming from below armed only
with a tongue...
fair fight, by anyone's standard:
i'm dripping sweat from both
ridicule and sarcasm...

st. michael comes down with a sword...
satan rises up with a flaming tongue,
does satan lick michael's sword
to draw the blood required for
running the heart factory?

               medieval people and their
"nuanced" explanation...
so many images contra words
contra literacy of the people outside
the realm of monks...

   satan rises from the depths of
     hell saying: i wish a socratic dialectic
with god...
god replies: michael i will send armed
with swords...
who ever said: the quill is mightier than
than the sword,
implied: when the tongue has
to be necessarily silenced? then!

      das schwart,
          das feder,
    das zunge...

       how many definite articles are
there in deutsche? das, der, die?
too many or too few?

         always with "st." michael armed
with a sword...
and satan... armed with only his tongue!
i guess, the tongue becomes a tank,
while the sword becomes a feather's
tickling effect...

    angehoben das teufel von der
    tiefe: und gab sie namen...

  (raised the devils from the depths:
  and gave them names)...

why is satan only armed with a flaming tongue,
while "st." michael is armed with a sword?
is god, the god-dialectic / theology
so afraid that it has to remain topped
with unchallenged imagery
                         of sword contra tongue?

ich werden anfangen:
   ich werden treffen du hälfteweg...
            im schreiben...

                  satan rose to a depiction
with "st." michael: disarmed...
  tongue in mouth: which should have been
his hand, "st." michael descended with
a sword... come to think of it,
with satan's tongue cut off...
it still spoke to "st." michael within his
hand...
  the sword overcame the medium...
and so writing was born...
once upon a time when satan's tongue
in his hand began licking the sword
of michael...
            and? if the contemporaries
should hope to know:
writing is the res extensa medium
of res cogitans:
            writing is an extension of thinking:
it's not an invitation to speak...

writing cannot be speaking,
however much commentaries you leave
behind...
writing is an extension of thinking:
it's not an invitation to speak...

it's no disguise...
    in terms of the depiction...
enough of Milton and Dante and...
satan came to the summit
  without his armour without his weapons...
the summit of the plateau...
tongue in gob and joke in cheek...
while "st." michael descended
wit a sword and a missing tongue...
it would appear that god cut out
"st." michael's tongue before his descent
while arming him with a sword to
cut the conversation even shorter
than it was supposed to be, to take place...

the aspired to monotheistic monogamy
of king Solomon,
to imitate swans...
    Muhammad's lost enterprise of
the: greatest harem the world has ever
seen... sorry... Muo-Mo-Hammie:
the macedonian alexander beat you to
the count of 365 concubines...
as did genghis khan...
           so many pakistanis with khan
as a surname...
             your failed harem ambition?
compared to the otherwise world "greats"?
with the ******* promise of 72 virgins
post-mortem? that ship is sinking in my head...
muhammad failed in the ambition
of averaging a 100+ concunbine **** fest...
so he promised 72 for those that believed in
him...
   and if he was ever competing with
king solomon? look at solomon...
         he chose monogamy in the end...
i guess it's a noble enterprise to come back
among the lizards...
to spawn from an egg: from an womb
made external by an egg in the form of a bird...
birds: half mammal half lizard...
            muhammad failed at having
an envious harem...
                which makes me a little bit envious
of him... compared to the others...
he's quiet honest...
        but if he was illiterate...
    who the **** wrote the Quran?
    what's that book, in praise of older women?
andrás vajda...
   who would have written the first
verses (if not the last) of the Quran if not
khadijah **** khuwaylid?

i'm sorry to say: the feeling of conversation
soon turns into a feeling of conversion,
me, beer in hand, park, bench,
an old pakistani walks up to me...
flips out a digital Quran,
tries to convert me...
     opens the book on surah al-baqarah...
i point at three words...
what are these, i ask?
he replies: oh... only allah knows...
really?! really?! i ask myself...

    the three words?
   alif. lam. meem.

           allah knows?!
guess i'm allah then...
given alif: أَلِف  (α, א) a-lif
                 lam: لاَم (λ, ל) l-am
   and meem: مِيم (μ, מ) m'eem...

so yeah, "god" knows...
   how was this old pakistani going to convert
me, supposing i was simply some european
"drunk" sitting on a bench, drinking beer,
assuming i was ease target for
isis propaganda?!

    "god knows"... when it comes
to old pakistanis trying to
             recruit young europeans...
god knows ****!

if this old pakistani was seeking an easy target
like some paedo, he was much mistaken,
what does a pumpernickle (has) to do with
a windmill?! zilch!
i'm not going to exactly crawl out
of my walther von der vogelweider:
        palästinalied
that much easier...
i won't....
   i just think:
the yids have tight defences
against proselytes... they abhor converts...
islam, welcomes them,
at their own peril...
          and there i was thinking that
urdu was "superior" to sanskrit...
an old pakistani tells me "god knows"
in relation to alif. lam. meem.

             i guess the quran has an inbuilt
proselyte defence mechanism:
in reverse... ask a muslim what alif. lam. meem.
means... if they tell you: only god knows...
ha ha...
              hello stupid...
                            is the islamic world playing
a jewish game of gematria?
are the three letters supposed to represent
some sort of "covert" message?
A.L.M.?
        what, based on the hebrew alphabet
where "a" is not an an A but a consonant(s)
akin to ayin and aleph?!
the gay genesis?
          
                really?
                 we: the europeans were perhaps
the barbarians in the medieval years,
harrowed by the cold...
lucky us: lucky me: we did learn to read...
so ignorant of the pakis to presume
such and such...

             that we are still unable to read
and will fall for the next sort of *******...
look at us! we even began to question
christianity with the unearthing of
the nag hammadi library where
jesus played chinese whispers with
st. thomas!

   next time i'll be listening to a camel jockey
or a magic carpet ride aladdin
i'll ask them: you dehydrated, or something?!
oh forget h'america,
their evangelical ******* is worth
as much as a free microwave or a toaster...

_

hell man...
    i mean my neighbor smokes
16 8ths in a spare of the week...

wha?
    ****...
   i remember i used to smoke
an 8th over the week...

yeah... an 1/8... of an ounce...
he smokes two ounces
in a week,
  
gets the **** on discount...
but still has to cough up
over 100 quid for the stash...

but... but... these organic
cigarettes you're pushing?

ha ha... **** me... holy basil
(tulsi leaves) -
and the peppermint and green
tea leaves?
   in ******, whatever you want
to call it, rolling paper...

i've seen the inner sleeve -
big fan of hunter s. thompson,
i suspect...
   otherwise you wouldn't
have used the second, plastic
filter...
  
   tell you what... don't put
that plastic filter on every cigarette -
halve it...
     or provide two or three...
it's reusable -
        i smoked one of your
placebo marijuana joints...
  and then i'm going to smoke
a red Indian cough-up...

   ah... these blue Indians...
Vishnu centrists -
   beyond blue blooded,
more blue skinned herbalists...

dunno... the effects are subtle...
you can only tell the difference
if you actually smoke tobacco...

but sure as hot **** on a street
in Calcutta -
    it beats the Arabic portable
hookah pipe...
   i.e.?  
         vapping - or vapourißing -

i'd say less a cure for tobacco smokers,
and more a cure for
the dope-heads...
    he (my neighbor) smokes
2 ounces a week,
   and somehow manages to stay
down on a job...

    no ******* way...
    he says it helps him to sleep...
like me...
   a liter of ***** and two
paracetamols,
    or one naproxen (if i'm lucky),
or two paracetamols
  and one amitriptyline (25mg)...

sorry, what? sound of mind?
sound of mind to the point
where i'm mindful of grammar
and spelling?

            **** man...
  the content is transcendent
    of whatever the receiving end deems
it to be...

i might actually buy into
this... placebo marijuana -
given that i am a tobacco smoker...
  ha ha! holy basil:
  like Basil Fawlty...

   as you see...
there are people, and there are "people",
there are neighbors,
    and there are "neighbors",
i don't see how the natives
can dictate universal laws of
     private property ownership...
esp. over such... trivial...
meaningless...
          sitting down on a cactus
****-naked "problems"...

i hate being mean,
   i hate telling someone to *******...
i really do...
    i compromised -
i stopped smoking cigarettes
out of my window...
  but yesterday's confrontation?
over a ******* barbeque...
    oops... the compromise
has just been revoked...
  
   music blasting into my ears
through my earphones...
the next thing my cuntish neighbor
will "hear" is sign language...
  
oh yeah... that primary school
lesson:

(a) WHY     (b) DON'T  
        (c) YOU    (d) ****    (e) OFF

(a) index + middle fingers
    slapped on the left palm knuckles up

(b) index + middle fingers
    slapped on the left palm knuckles down

(c) scissor index + *******
   into the side of the left hand

(d) fist, vertical slam onto the left
  palm

(e) thumb's up moving away from
  the palm of the left hand...

because?
      i just can't be bothered trying
to reason with some people...
     they might as well be put in zoological
confinement, and put under observation...
but i'd feel sorry for the chimps
and other animals, have to share a close
proximity.
Clemence Huet Apr 2012
I'd been trying to write a poem
Just one ******* poem
But he said
Just **** around
Swallow down a bowl full of squares
Let’s play games with each other’s minds
Spend a night lost in a house of cards
Where the joker cackles despite your begging
A reminder of what I could do without
Shouting at the world from the white pavilion
You suckers!
With your skirts hitched up and tongues hanging out
Gagging on a lover’s loneliness
All I see is your undergarments crying for attention
With a liquor solace barely down your throat

Eighteen silver blades
Smile at me with their perfect teeth
One to mark each year that past
A nineteenth will not be necessary
Ready to drag
Like the man trailing his head on a string
Across the surgeon’s winking knife
Tapping their toes on the bathroom counter
Anxious to mingle with my flesh
I’ve already scrubbed in
The survival rate looks dismal
The cotton reel loosens and my halo slips
Down - the noose around my neck

He sat across the room in plaid
Remarked upon the crosshatch of red
That drew the crooked red grin on the white of my thigh
Like loops of raspberry liquorice
Seeping out sticky tears
He misses handling the vegetables
Who ordered cocktails in lurid colours
Well, I’ve a mélange of my own
A collection of prescriptions from the doctor’s office
Stored in a heart shaped box
To swallow down like jelly beans
I’m waiting for that deadly sugar rush

Death’s been dancing on my doorstep
Absent minded as I sit at the dinner table
Head in hand, foot in grave
There’ll be no morning migraine
Perhaps a little mourning in the peripheral vision
Swept up from beneath the climbing frame
Under a soil blanket with a tomb stone mattress
Coughing up the sand in my throat
That I emptied from the egg-timer
Those darling quadrilateral crystals
Blissful in their ignorance  
Disturbing my quiet complacency
Drowned in a glass of tomato juice
That I poured from my skull
Death holds my hand in the dark
And I whisper to pass on the message
Bury me with pyjama’s and a pillow
bones Jan 2015
On the day
her body burned
she asked the
winds to be
her friends
and they
picked her
up and poured
her through
the fingers of
their hands
like a river
without ending
that won't
be tied or
bound, until
every trace of
dust embraced
the freedom it
had found.
August Sep 2013
Can I just go on forever and never have to love?

Can I etch my eyes into the curves of my fingerprints?

When will my heart beat like the wings of a hummingbird?

When will I be enough for the ones that I touch?

Can I keep walking without a home?

I am overcome

with intense displays of emotion

sometimes,

In the pouring rain.

And I know it's in vain

But I carry on,

*Oh, you know I carry on.
Amara Pendergraft 2013
Dan Hess Feb 2014
Happenstance to the melancholic gives leave the sin of pride.
Inbound reconnaissance tells not the bearer of influence.
Squeamish at first: a foreshadowing of calamitous bonding.

A space between the mark of corporeal and the ethereal; a stringent hiatus
That which rattles the concrete foundation of morality is scarcely a malleable recourse.
Regret stains the unfounded soul: an enigma of ephemeral perforations.

A separation of the unmitigated humanities; misandry topples the writhing snake.
Impact; a cleansing of the maker's flaws integrated solemnly.
Complacency arrests the administration of the abhorred; unbridled is the autonomy of a guru.  

Ambivalent giftedness burdens the reliant and haughty.
A flick of the tongue brings forth the cinema mortem.
Castaway: alone to wade in the sea of obscenities.

A temporal causality allows no mourning to abscond.
Negligence is not the enemy, but indulgent wrath.
Hesitant: a stroke of qualia begets the end of a maiden.
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
repetition, that's a good technique, a form of
reiteration, emphasis, as you like to
move in the river of synonymousness -
i mean, plenty to choose from -
well it's a better technique than rhyming,
it's like Kaiser Karl Lagerfeld said
about Coco Chanel's legacy after she died
in 1971: 'people tend to forget, that,
once upon a time, Chanel was old hat.
it was only Parisian doctors' wives who
still wore it. nobody wanted it - it was hopeless.'
(oh i can be couture no problem,
the other side of me that's into galleries -
even though that never brought me much
luck with the ladies, Beelzebub ******* on my
face and i started to squeeze out maggots
ensuring my face was forever crater riddled
moon - yes, excess white blood cells).
that's the same with poetry, it can't be
love me doo d'ah mushy mushy candy-floss
longing crap - mate, i'm a bus ****** and
this bus is coming but it's already 20 minutes late...
and it's ******* cats, dogs, frogs... Norwegian
acid rain, my anorak is peeling like a snake
shedding its skin and you're rewriting the early
Beatles unleashed on the American public:
shaved, hair trimmed into mushroom bops
all that Rene Magritte **** 'love, love me do!'
forget it, it's not going to happen, rhyming is the last
resort, i prefer the chance rhyme, it sometimes
happens, and it's too cute when it happens randomly
rather than with premeditation;
you can also throw out all the other premeditation
of techniques that poetry is known for...
what's the point? and back concerning rhyming,
you really want your poetry to be discussed by
schoolchildren and an english teacher in between
grammar lessons
                                  rhyming schemes and all?
that's how it goes:
         her name was Dazie          (a)
         she was never lazy             (a)
         i wrote her a sonnet           (b)
         reclining on a car bonnet  (b)
                                                               that's how they
do anatomy on poetry, the forensic team will
be with you shortly, the only reason i can think of
and know of as to why people are abhorred by
poetry (it's a natural repellent, spray it on weeds
             and insects, a natural insecticide,
****, spray it everywhere) is, because people on
the academic level have scrutinised it, analysed it
to the extent that it's not even there, it gets you thinking:
so who the hell was paying attention to the mammoth
novels of Tolstoy? oh right... no one!
the forensics, the post-mortem of poetry,
it has literally been mummified - the brain came out
as porridge ****** out through the nose.
are you familiar with Tenacious D's one note song?
that's what rhyming is to me, ever hear it?
it's the -ing twang
                            it's the -ing echo echo echo echo echo...
halfwit variations, you're hitting the same note,
great if you're penetrating a girl and she's giving
you an Opera of Vowels... otherwise it ends up
in a schoolroom, with an english teacher
and the rhyming scheme of a sonnet is?
                          ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
or?
                                                              abracadabra.
personally though Tenacious D's song kiełbasa,
etymology:
                    kieł       (canine, in polish)
   -basa (i'm guessing: the base of)             -
it's a sausage                                based on canines,
kieł (insert a           w    for the         ł.. tongue tied, eh?)
is a reference to a canine, a sharp tooth anyway,
and with -basa             i just intuitively thought of how
a hebrew would write it (i.e. hiding vowels)
and therefore juggled in an      e                  for -base.
they do, even though hebrew has Aleph (א) it hides
the vowels: S VRYTHNG RDS LK S - or i might
just be bullshitting you.
Francie Lynch Jul 2015
Did you read about the father
Who met the girl
With his daughter's eyes.
The gift of sight.
Post-mortem.

Then I read about the mother
Who gave her son a kidney.
The gift of ***.
Pre-mortem.

Finally, I met a girl
Forty years ago
Still using my heart.
The gift of love.
Eternal.
Thomas Conlan Nov 2015
Startled myself just to find
Death resting inside my mind
A dream from where I never woke
Until I saw spirits shrouded in smoke
My lungs, inhaled cold fresh air
Exhaled mirages of silk grey hair
Caught a glimpse of loving eyes
Amidst the mist's amourous lies
Prompting me to flush with heat
And allow this weary heart to beat
Captured intensely by this sight
Even while it withers to white
Turns out this man is not as dead
As Death dreams discreetly in his head
Liam C Calhoun Dec 2015
The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.

I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”

Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.

It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”
You can only run for so long, and all it takes is one song to bring you right back.
ethyreal Oct 2013
husks of albino spiders crumbling
deep within the bowels of icy caves.

shells of those speckled black and brown,
rolling like tumbleweed across dead plains.

orange fangs slimed with millenniums of muck,
drowning deeper into the bogs, each inch worth a thousand years.

glossy black  carcasses entwined in their own webs,
swollen abdomen draining, but growing heavy with dust and gnats.
Love Nov 2014
Hark the night awakens,
The dawn lost,
Darkness cloaks her heart once more,
A breath leaves her,
Her voice chokes her,
She is too cynical,
She’s begun to lose herself,
In a labyrinth she is tossed into,
She knows no escape,
For now, the night calls
With the promise of
*An everlasting darkness.
Written a year ago, forgive the lack of taste.
Traveler Feb 2016
From the Valley of the Dead
She cries out to be fed
Why does she hunger so
Only an addict could ever know...
Traveler Tim
re to 1-18
Hank Desroches Mar 2013
Etymologically,
          paradise
is inherited from the Latin
          paradisus
and the Greek
          paradeisos
and ultimately an ancient Iranian root --
          pairi daêza.

In theory, paradise is a religious term. By that definition, paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization; in paradise, there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness.
It’s absurd, though, how we provide ourselves with such a convenient idea, a carrot for all mankind to share in our relentless drive towards death. It’s absurd that we must rely on such nonsensical ideals to inspire us to adhere to literal, arbitrarily-dictated morals. “Thou shalt not do things we say you probably shouldn’t.
Except sometimes.”
“Actually, whenever, as long as you feel bad about it and spend a moment kneeling quietly and thinking something along the lines of ‘So, like, sorry -- my bad. It won’t happen again, unless it does.’”
The fundamental mistake here is attempting to delineate the existence of Man with an old book and relentless propaganda and childhood indoctrination and threats of post-mortem punishment, but more on topic -- why can’t one just live the right way without this kind of artificial motivation? It’s a juvenile concept that we’ve taken much too far. It marginalizes the human race -- “listen, Man, if you eat all your broccoli, then you can have dessert.” But what happens in this situation, when the dessert isn’t real?
What I mean to say is that maybe you should eat your broccoli because it’s healthy, and because, besides what society has attempted to instill in you, it might actually be tasty if you give it a chance.
Live for now. Care about people now. Because you don’t get anything afterwards; however cynical it may be, dessert is just a cold grave or a flame designed for whole incineration of your being. Paradise is now.
It's technically prose, I understand, but read it like it's poetry :) You'll enjoy it more maybe.
Emi Jay Sep 2018
the post-mortem will say:
sudden cardiac arrest
(medicine cannot quantify
death by a broken heart).

i thought it was sweet,
the arrhythmia you gave me
(at least the butterflies
dissolved harmlessly in acid).

you knew me, invasively,
a mortician's secret autopsy
(you counting my scars, ribs,
was it more habit than desire?)

curiosity is what killed me;
mine and yours, ill-matched
(i would have preferred cruelty
to your cool detachment).

the post-mortem has found:
i died of natural causes
(which makes you, my heart-
breaker, a force of nature)
(extended version of "tua culpa")
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2021
i thought it was ****** obvious what i was doing there,
i walked in with my Slayer band t-shirt off
wiping off the sweat from my face...
ah... a cheap bottle of wine... £3.50... a Chilean Merlot...
nothing like cheap wine for some kalimotxo...
and if that wine doesn't do the trick for a nightcap...
the cheapest whiskey available... no more than
35cl: but i promised myself not to drink both completely...
obviously the wine doesn't have an electronic tag
that needs to be taken off at the cashiers'...
but the whiskey does...
come midnight it's this long centipede winding through
the self-checkout aisles...
two... of the finest quality Hijab mystique organising
the flow of people...
oh... the finest...
                     first you scan the items...
then you're asked to wait for the confirmation of your
age... so someone has to some with
a ticket (so little about all of this is about
self-checking-out)... and then... you have to walk
to the end of the aisle to get the electronic tag off...
with your receipt...
so i went to the end... where the bit that takes
the electronic tags off is placed in a drawer...
along with... this night in particular...
a raw white onion... and some baby clothes that
were returned all piled up in a shopping trolley...
apparently i was blocking something important...
that's when i was asked this profound
existential question:
                           what are you doing here?
oh **** me... it hit me like a rock...
i sometimes wish for three things... a slightly bigger
phallus... a much more bushier beard...
and... a talent for wit... for waspish wit...
for playful wit...
   some whiplash wit...
                 something that i might: snap out of something
instead of... what just came out?
a what... sorry... didn't hear that...
'what are you doing here?!'
     exactly those exclamation marks with purpose
of interrogation...
- am i... just growing from the roots up?
- am i... is Goodmayes a no-go zone for white
boys after a 10pm curfew or something?
i grew up around these parts...
i went to school around these parts...
a predominantly Irish neighbourhood...
is this a no-go zone?

i mean... i don't expect pleasantries from
cashiers at... midnight... but it's not like i was
the only person there...
was i holding a cloud of balloons and
wearing a clown suit with full-make up?
did i have an pink elephants on a string
or a golden fly on a chain?

'what are you doing here?!'
what a snap of juicy vindictiveness in that
tiny Hijab specimen of beauty...
i somehow must have invaded her space
or some *******...
but... i was there to get the electronic
tag off the neck of my whiskey bottle...
i don't think i was there to later come
home and write this nonsense:
if she asked me that same question:
on the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh
at 5am...
but then again: no one asks those questions
at 5am on the longest day in the year
on Arthur's Seat... a good morning:
chirpy one... isn't it? suffices...

    being asked a profound existential question
in a supermarket: at midnight of
a Monday is...

   aha... now it's sort of obvious...
            if i decided to go elsewhere with my wine...
say... to the brothel...
and i came across Khadaya... Khadija...
            Khada... all aspects of nakedness...
so this is what my face looks like
to women... after i lost... 20kg in mass?
  i'm attractive once more...
              honest anchoring... she's about to receive
£2.00 per minute for an hour...
and she likes my face... and i like her face...
eh... *** like a Lamborghini and a body that looks
but more importantly feels as comfortable
to touch as... one might hope to find oneself
sitting in a well worn leather armchair...

always objectification within the need for metaphor...
allusions to...
but a bit different when it can't be so obvious...
she's this Hijab donning princess Jasmine
working in the supermarket
and i'm just a cyclist wearing a Slayer t-shirt
who dropped in for a nightcap of cheap
wine and cheap whiskey...
or perhaps to her... i'm...
   some myth of a northern barbarian who...
arrived in Jerusalem with Barbarossa pickled
in a barrel... hmm?
         well... i'm not exactly a werewolf...
   not just yet...

again: was i there to solve a Su Doku puzzle or change
a light-bulb via mime?!
flow of people... i was placing myself
in the least obstructive way possible:
now... i'm overthinking the punch line...
it's coming off as if i'm somehow autistic or something...
who wouldn't...

in the most un-spec-ta-cu-lar of circumstance
you get such an open question...
before having my wisdom teeth pulled out
i asked the anaesthetic man:
quo vadis?

               seems more correct to ask:
such a generality... but not in such a defensive...
almost scolding manner...
i did mention she was a Hijab gem...
a petite little thing who forgot to objectify me
as human traffic of buyer...
with a purse's worth of whiskey
that had an electronic tag attached to the neck
that needed to be "dismantled"...

after skim-watching a few episodes
of the Sopranos... Tony Soprano is deemed an
attractive man by his psychiatrist...
so... what am i? a ******* ageing Adonis
or something?
now it feels bothersome to have lost
those 20kg in mass...
100 push ups a day... 100 stomach crunches...
cycling...
i knew this would land me in a spot of
bother... no more prostitutes joking
(kindly) that i have bigger **** than they have...

thank god the omission of a sudden limp
**** because: she shouldn't be in the profession
and i'm in no mood to ****
a tender, shy, deer...
               because it works when it's required
to work and i'll go through 5 before
it becomes resolute: that lilac / blue pill
will not make me prove a point on just 1...

dinner? cinema?
if she offers up the full platter of ******* oysters
and her body becomes the whole
complexity of cinema...
but not being corned by two Hijab beauties
at the self-checkout aisle
coordinating human traffic...

again: forever in the reiteration pause...
'what are you doing here?!'
am i supposed to be somewhere else?
the question asks itself:
why would a girl of your "sort" ask a whitey
that sort of question?
is this a no-go zone area akin to Malmo
in Sweden... am i expected to don
a ******* Pakistani pyjama to walk safe...
don a bushier beard than the one
i adorn trimmed by an Ottoman?

clearly i'm fuckable and clearly i also ****...
if she was allowed a different scenario
where she wasn't a self-checkout coordinator
and i wasn't speedily trying to get out
from the concept of a queue she might:
ask a less abrupt a question...

**** anything that moves...
       one motto worth keeping in mind when
reading Kant's labyrinth...
i promise this to anyone who undertakes
the "mission"... the part of the critique of pure reason
that comes last in the second volume
that's: a consolidation piece...
that's title: the transcendental methodology...
oh god... it's like this (almost) revelation:
but it's most certainly a joy a cascade to read...
that's when Kant relaxes and doesn't bother
to stress his... systematic approach to...
not language: to the idea...
what the idea is? that's my own to digest...
even these years later...

if she was older than me...
if she wasn't sizing me up... seeing how...
my shadow is probably larger than her body
come noon...
how she might just be...
constipated / claustrophobic through all her...
restrictions in attire...
how she was paired up with another girl
and there was no forbidding authority
of same-faith colleagues looking over them...
she asked me the most profound
question no one is expected to hear
in a supermarket...

           hence these words as spiral...
it's not the first time i've seen these two Hijab beauties...
i can't imagine...
having the audacity to write an autobiography
post... in vivo mortem!
i can't imagine writing... succumbing to write...
after... having lived... a most...
exploitative life...
i shudder at the prospect of reading...
Seven Years in Tibet...
i have the original copy...
it's enough that i read:
Harold Norse's: Memoirs of a ******* Angel...
that's enough for me...

             in writing there's only the fiction:
the fantasy... or the absolutely terrible mundane:
grit...
lives loved by the gods so that they might
be shared with as many as possible
do not belong in the realm of words...
however terrible it might sound...
all the ancient Roman poets wrote prosaic:
if not maxims then anecdotal evidence of...
taking leave: taking leisure in scrutiny..
too much of what's supposedly life
and how language is employed in "said" life
is limited to... bureaucratic fudge-packaging...
try escape that cycle of: abuse of informal language...
when you're expected to begin with:
dear sir /  madam...
   and end with: kind regards /
the distinction between yours faithfully vs. yours
sincerely...

she took a fancy after i already took her fancy...
perhaps it's a shame...
of the hierarchies of man...
and the stresses brought on by time...
all this... graveyard of space.
Pagan Paul Apr 2018
.
Some people search for a higher truth,
their lofty beliefs keeping them aloof.
They look past death to find out what?
Are they not content with what they've got?

Maybe they fear there is nothing beyond,
after the natural span they have donned.
Maybe they crave an extension on high,
but we are mortal, and mortals can only die.

So worry not about what comes after,
just enjoy life with love and laughter.
And as for the workings of eternity -
well – you'll just have to wait and see!


© Pagan Paul (18/02/17)
.
F White Feb 2011
we walk alone
our heads down
our pens in meadows
that no one else
has ever explored

we look upward
eyes towards
cloud formations
only known to
giants and gods

If we cry
the water nourishes
our paper, fuels
our muse
and sprouts seedlings
from the hurt.

But when we
die, our page falls
silent.
And this is why
we must always
Keep On.

Keats,
This is For
you.
Copyright FHW, 2011

A.N.: After writing this, I dded the last verse...then on a whim, looked up the month Keats passed away. It was February. Moved by the man himself.  A tribute to all of us writers whose strength is at their greatest when their worlds are falling apart. <3
EgoFeeder May 2013
A death so befuddled could only be foolish;
I've made a deal with the devil and will soon perish
Into his mortem of torture that varies so motley;
As I end this show - I drift from a faceless pageantry

Linear and trivial has this question period been;
And now I'm seeing the chariot of the poets serene
It's majesty of profundity and his youthful command
A boy-ish preface to his ceaseless alluding brand;

Of starved affection expressed through the bards lute
As the actor of fate - I'll hang over the mandrake root
A skeletal descendence into the earths pigment;
With no curious exhumers to defile or prevent

Asmodeus and I - As we share our laughable fears;
Appraisal from the creator of what I hold dear
Willingly abiding his whims and demented court;
As the next generation that twists and contorts

The extremes of thought into something strange;
Removing all pride from what shouldn't change
If it seems so be working then why fix it?
A hypocritical cliche lost in the Sanskrit!

There's nothing one can say that hasn't been said;
In this replicated existence recycled from the dead
Societal fornication leaves naught but a sour mind;
Obsessed with the golden rays that present us as kind

Laborious and ridden with worry over wealthy trouble;
Caught up in normality our purpose left in rubble
Conceiving the end of life as something of a curse
Cowering at the sight of the imminent black hearse

How can all these people fear the only thing certain?
Dreading the day they witness the closing curtain
Or have I just thrown away my use for living;
And Gifted all the words that prove costly for giving?

Or perhaps we've so much to tell with no one to receive?
what's the point anyway? Just to preach and deceive;
Ignorant and narrow- we're all just avoidant invertists
With the sole reputation as simple egotists

Regret takes it toll in the oddest form
Just like the queerest smirk I felt so warm
Creaking my limbs until they were hanging loose;
Killing the mechanical switch at the end of a noose

My Prevailing senses fading from light;
And her captivating eyes as my final sight
Clenching my last breath as my only unseen coven;
For I will never perceive this life again..

I awoke inside of a room that i'd knew in a memory;
Where Was I sent? Is this purgatory?
I rose up from my resting place with an agonizing scream;
For I was in my bedroom - It was all a dream....
Matthew Harlovic Jul 2016
after the author’s death
bury his work with his last breath*

© Matthew Harlovic
Shain Brown Oct 2020
A ghost lives within me.
Slowly poking memories in my mind
haunting me of my past
slowly offering me darkness
as it takes away my light

Let me catch my breath
one last time
while the sunset lowers
and I die with the sun

but its never over
as I am here
a living vessel
crafted by stolen parts
leeching by the dead night
Jay Ash Sep 2014
many days
and many nights
i have dreamt
of seeing You

yet whenever i am close
to You
i am in more pain than
when i am without You

i cannot live without You
but die when i am with You.
pulchra mortem (latin) : "a beautiful death"
Keith J Collard Jul 2012
In flight, cloud pours winged ink,
feathered in atmospheric caption,
in and out, as a cursor blinks,
gliding portal-- ground casting.

a falling feather stroking air,
day's mind--now nigrescence,
torch waving in drip drop lair,
corvid "kaaw"--all sides pressing.

blackness: it is infinite cursive,
folded 'round a writer's eyes.
A hearse' undulating curtain,
the wings-- as the crow flies.
*
sound of the internal chasm,
shamen of post-mortem height,
feathered pen will spasm,
with morsel--writhing in and out of light.
It is not my story to tell:
Languishing dreams in the midst of barbed wire fences,
Fearless laughter,
We add lemon, chile powder and salt to this border.

They carry these stories,
Heavy as a sack filled with indignities,
Weighty, like your grandmother’s advice,
Cumbersome, like this daily mental displacement.

I have not bought big things as of lately,
In my mind I plan my exits,
I constantly check my relocation fund,
“What if” is a constant in my lexicon.

I often break in tears at the sound of an immigrant story,
My emotions become gallons of water:
broken and splashed by the boots of immigration officers,
Little do they know, we are cacti:
Tough and our seeds also flourish post mortem.

I want to sing an immigrant song:
Less like butterflies who migrate,
But more like dislocated nations,
Collateral flesh, caught up in steel thorns.

Rest assured we will survive,
Like leaves of siempreviva,
Even after torn away from our stem,
We will grow our own roots:
Defiant, resilient, and with a stubborn willingness to belong.

We are you.
Blood On The Tracks**

It spoke in rhythmic transgressions, lifted from the dotted line. It held. It fell.

Polka dots made up of tiny horizontal lines, intersecting with vertical peers.

Overindulging on the semblance of fact, just to seem like they’d grown up a bit.

Self-engrossing indoctrinations to be preached out and blown over…for the rabble it was.

“When something’s not right, it’s wrong.”

Wide-eyed on sleep craved incognizance. It had all gone on too long.

They tried to force their hand, critiquing structure through the veil of a cabaret roused in the liveliest of their rooms.

Stormy shores swept to sea lit calm as the doorframe shook.

Set for a strut, intent on curbing this freshly acquired sensationalism.

Gravity logs its presence through rain dropped conviction…a steam engine sounds off in the distance...finality.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
well the left is dead, and the left turned into tartan, i guess the islanders
are gearing up to a male patriarch where ***** go free with jealousy
rather than queened freely;
i know the left died, but to have it third day resurrect
in scotland, i'd never think the tories flavoured
outside of plum plucked blue;
only when a politics is unappealing to quote no vote,
is a change of monarch at hand,
and then why such the left disappear almost completely?
it's one thing for tyranny to leave a listening airy cleft
where once thought reigned tyrannically un-dialectical,
but it's another cased scenario to suddenly
lever a man to contort into a female face on either
photograph or coin, so we leave the wonders of chillingly
easy rhymes of song from the 1960s to the 21st complex,
and we leave the reign almost feeding a reprimand
for the multi-cultural having no artistic endeavour
in a counter. multi-cultural will not provide a counter-culture,
given the scenario of tyranny to aggregate all into taxable citizens,
perhaps that's rome shrunk into the vatican for the alphabet to survive,
perhaps why latin is "dead" and perhaps why poetry is dead,
because the only walky talkies are women in retirement;
forget dialectics even, remind yourself of dialogue first!
in the end, like the pre-socratics, i'll be a snippet of words
to bruise myself on fame post-mortem;
of course i live in readied tyranny, no one votes
and the left of politics was taken my northern nationalists...
in the end, thank **** at least that happened!
the king wears a kilt!
and? better my youth be a foolery in the realm of vocabulary
than prancing in tutu and bra on a table in ibiza;
yes, i'll be courteously french while i age in the silent winery:
that place where you won't even hear a corkscrew.*

the politics is long, i'd rather live on nn the faroe islands,
but it reminded me of a charles in henry's nursery rhyme:
charles the first survived, slow motion:
beheaded, in ****, later did some philanthropy;
conspiracy almost ******, gaffed choking on a peanut peel, never married -
entered the nunnery via public opinion that'd never allow a scandal or a ****** birth.

intelligence is uncomfortable,
let's leave it to the pigs
or play dead among the dogs,
or levy it with questions in gushing recurrence;
intelligence is uncomfortable,
let's utilise it with someone saying:
i rather speak to someone 100 prior or 100 years after.

or as later proved: among the citizens an uncomfortable censor
was a woman, that's the thing:
misogyny and homosexuality are almost alike:
gays love to talk to women but loath to butter up a sour bread dough,
misogynists loath to talk to women but love to **** 'em;
where's the middle way buddha? where's the middle way?
socrates turning into a misogynist disguised in homosexual accents
in old age? the old man got away with acceptable norms in old age,
almost, they figured out his **** pure and minded his cranium crucible divergence
from: young boys readied for pedophiles spoke more flowers
than my wife while cooking compost of fruits!

ah! i live in a spicy tomorrow, gearing up to charles the third's
reign with talk of the amputated left limp either side of the diaphragm
equator, hence the scot nationalists,
whereby we have beauty anorexic strutting eager for a faint in a cabbage patch,
and we best test tube in pigmenting alkali,
writing songs about life, not poetry of that ideal: "from the cosmos"
of autobiographic detail of metaphysics to exclude evil from a humming choir;
or as i took to my father in sepia:
beauty in anorexia, language in bad grammar and even more a terrible spelling
that never experienced the lines of detention to conform,
and then all the moral freedoms to not think about
and when thought about, quickly attached to **** smear
girly literature;
but do i go around talking of my easily-read literature?
so why this italian pole girl ruining my diary of saved orientated ordination?
she jealous or just illiterate the she-troll of all?

misogynists are like homosexuals, although the prior have no politico thumb,
we love ******* the brains out, we hate being boyfriends
from magazines or the psychology sections of saturday newspapers editions;
plus we like our own company, which is hard to grasp;
i mean, we love women within the membrane of ****** temperatures twinning,
but that's hardly the right temperature for conversation akin to vishnu and lakshmi.
Amber Grey Jan 2014
Do you remember,
two years ago

I wrote you a story,
bound with the string I could find
beneath the burned acre carpet
of my first apartment.

I gave it to you
two weeks late, on
printed cheap paper.
Chemically melted with the telling
of what I saw,
two hundred miles away
on January fifth.

I wrote about the cargo train
that passes across the street
of my university every day
at nine pm.

I told you that it drove at least two times faster
than the Amtrak, because people are more precious than cargo.

I told you about how when I was stuck
at the street crossing,
from nine to nine fifteen.
How I saw salvation
in the screaming, shaking tracks.

Tonight I heard the same train,
from outside my third apartment,
set on the opposite side of the train tracks,
a couple meters across
from where I stood two years ago,
when the smell of acid pavement
inked my memories of you,
and your eighteenth birthday.
evilhag Jul 2013
they say death
is not death
until someone has murmured your name for the last time.

your life hangs in a balance,
your internal organs screaming for decay
but i won't say your name

your flesh looks beautiful that way
i'll watch you decompose
Noandy May 2015
Do not talk of the honey I pickled in your light bulbs

They do not have the map to help us reach The Alps

Just talk of the hungry flower growing on my lungs

At least they have the address to the hut on my palms

That’s drawn by the little girl who feasted on the chalks

The butterflies long ago planted along in their pulse.


Quick,  


Incinerate the 1800s post-mortem portraits

In black light's faked midnight perfumes

For you are my forlorn apostrophe high on gas

That might ask questions while telling us your tales

Or reluctantly whisper ****** things about Laqus

Who is wasting us to the wistful hell flowers.
Luke Gagnon Dec 2013
I’ve whittled shelves into my body to try and bring an

order to things. All it did was make space.

So many shelves like staircases built in anger.

Winding forcefully

until they end right where I stand.


2. There are days I wash my face with vinegar

and soak my fists in horse *****. I use it to

conceal the musty smell of forgotten Bibles.


3. It’s while God is in my novels,

that I see my bedroom floor.

A junkyard of loose-leaf prayers,

my boots go out of their way to step on

dry crunchy ones.

I can hear the breaking, and it’s satisfying.

The acrid smell of fall

in my mouth,

I bite my lip just to feel the sting.


4. The phantom pain in my chest tastes like cotton

stuck to my teeth.


5. I am Leonid Rogozov in Antarctica, I’ve built my

staircase-shelves by cutting into myself,

only local-numbness needed.


6. No, my shelves are not staircases.

Shelves never extend forward. Just, upward.

A little too much like trees,

not permanent enough in the ground.


7. It all reduces to sawdust anyway, collected

on the bedroom floor.

I’ve been sweeping it up for 40 days now,

each day, a little more.

One day, the floor will be clean.


8. You say, “You are made of blessings.” I say, “No, I’m made of blood

and skeleton bones.”


9. I love You. You say you love me.

Some days, that’s enough.


10. Today, Just yellow-

brown pages and

nothing resembling gospels.


11. I wasn’t born, I just walked in

one quiet evening and started living


12. After every shelf I whittle I still ask,

What is numbered in my life?


13. Things will change, things will change.

Things will change.


14. I have layers and layers of papier-mâché skins you can thumb

through like pages.

You’ve peeled them away,

each becoming more raw and permanent.

The cleanliness worries me.


15. There are 17 different kinds of fractures:

non-displaced, complete, oblique, transverse, comminuted, greenstick,

simple, linear, incomplete, compound, compacted, avulsion,

compression, stress, impacted, displaced, spiral and fatigue.

Believing in You makes me tired.


16. ‘Post mortem nihil, ipsaque mors nihil’

Death built its own shelves

After My body was felled.


17. When it’s you resting on my tree-shelves,

I begin to see an end.

Books are the most efficient weapons in the world.
Day Mar 2014
You are
every fallen piece of skin
and strand of hair you
left behind, along with
the perfume that
I can't seem to wash
from my pillow.

I spilled your love into my
sink and tried to wash it with
formaldehyde,
I bartered your words away to
the 90% of the grey matter
I don't use,
I taught myself to pretend
every emotion in your eyes
were just a mirror of mine-
but, despite all of this,
I can never coax my
memories to reject you.

This body was never your temple.
It was never your kingdom.
It was your carpet,
which you burned with each
steely gaze and flaming word,
and which you trampled upon after
every storm.

You were every broken stone I
painted bone-white
after you hurled them into the heavens
only to watch them fall
again-
onto me.

Carving your name into my ribs,
you taught me to
sigh you into existence
each post-mortem night,
and I haven't found a room yet
where I can breathe without
inhaling you in
again.
Derek Yohn Oct 2013
People of Wal-Mart:
what the **** is wrong with you?
You are reducing our lives
and prices in unison...

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

This is news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are not what you own.

fugazi = fake (italian)
Abdul Khan Feb 2014
I need to write a poem about a ***** cell
something that illustrates
the magnitude
of existence, specifically
.5 our origin.
This poem should pluck heart strings,
our strum like violin (redundant?)
as that’s what good poems do,
and we are emotionally wired
from birth to death.
During conception
our parents were not thinking about us (though
God was, and his warmth
is warmer than the womb
or Sun) and that brings us to the pleasure
the stimuli integrated
within the net
mesh pocket of living organisms.
What strokes a heart? Not a violin,
no, empathy, understanding, the saliva
of love and lust and passion, so much to
discuss, so many images
to muster into paper.
Do you see the futility in this?
**** this poem,
this poem is not important.
You are the individual that rocked the chances of time and genetics!
You are the individual that mastered death with breath!
You are known before birth and post mortem,
as there is transcendence beyond
that ancient brain of yours, dear reader.
There were billions of potential combinations
of ***** and egg, and you
are the ***** fish caught,
and you
are the one bathed
and you
are one of ***** suds.

Your rituals of wallets and currency,
your miss-personifications of love,
all irrelevant.
You are only known whole-ly by God
Hope you guys like it :D
What do you know about silence?
Silence on the other end of the phone.
No breathing.
No laughing.
No crying.
Silence.
The white noise of fear.

What do you know about helplessness?
Helplessness in your own eyes.
Nothing you can do.
Nothing you can say
Nothing but watching
Helplessness
The catylyst of fear

What do you know about loss?
Loss of you mind, your friend.
It's too late he's gone
It's too late he's forgotten
It's too late you're crying
The post-mortem of fear

What do you know about me?
Me and my tired eyes.
Numb is my mind
Numb are my fingers
Numb everywhere
The desolation of fear

*The Suicide Diaries

— The End —