Erik_Daniel_Herman - Hello Poetry

my safeword is ~ "harder" I was born with a ruler in my fist. Not to measure curtains or coffins, but to press against the welt rising on my thigh and whisper: there, that is real. The world speaks too much in vapor. Love you. Trust me. I didn’t mean it. Cloud-words, steam escaping a mouth that has already forgotten its own weather. But pain, pain is a red signature. It does not revise itself. I learned early: what can be seen can be entered. What can be entered can be known. Bruise blooming like a slow violet gospel beneath the skin’s pale altar. I do not have to read between those lines. Most people are riddles wrapped in perfume, their wants moving like fish under black water. They say kindness but mean hunger. They say forever but mean until bored. Their eyes flicker with small economies. I grew tired of deciphering. Tired of psychoanalysis in dim kitchens, of tracing childhood ghosts in the curve of a smile. The unconscious is a labyrinth with no minotaur— just mirrors breeding mirrors. So I chose the clean arithmetic. If you want my body, say body. If you want my knees, say knees. Use is a verb without metaphor. It has weight. It has duration. It leaves marks I can catalog like saints catalog relics. Here: the wrist, faint band of rope-burn, three centimeters. Here: the shoulder, crescented teeth, four small moons. Proof of transaction. No subtext. In surrender there is a strange geometry. A narrowing of variables. A quieting of the terrible choir of what-did-you-mean. When I kneel, I am not unraveling motives. I am not excavating your mother’s grief or your father’s silence. I am not a detective of your damaged cathedral. I am a surface. I am sensation. I am the measurable field. And in that field I exist without speculation. Some call it self-destruction. They prefer their illusions upholstered. They prefer love that requires translation, faith that requires footnotes. But I have seen too many counterfeit halos. Better the visible welt than the invisible lie. Better the contract of flesh than the fog of intention. When the palm descends and the nerve-flare sings up my spine, there, is certainty. Not romance. Not destiny. Not salvation. Just impact. Just contact. Just this body answering to gravity. And afterward, alone, I trace the swelling map of myself as if I were both cartographer and country. I press the tender place and feel the sharp starburst. Yes. Still here. Still real.

0

Erik_Daniel_Herman

Mar 11

Mar 11, 2026 at 10:46 PM UTC

MariaGuzman

this ********* wants a cuddle

my safeword is ~ "harder" I was born with a ruler in my fist. Not to measure curtains or coffins, but to press against the welt rising on my thigh and whisper: there, that is real. The world speaks too much in vapor. Love you. Trust me. I didn’t mean it. Cloud-words, steam escaping a mouth that has already forgotten its own weather. But pain, pain is a red signature. It does not revise itself. I learned early: what can be seen can be entered. What can be entered can be known. Bruise blooming like a slow violet gospel beneath the skin’s pale altar. I do not have to read between those lines. Most people are riddles wrapped in perfume, their wants moving like fish under black water. They say kindness but mean hunger. They say forever but mean until bored. Their eyes flicker with small economies. I grew tired of deciphering. Tired of psychoanalysis in dim kitchens, of tracing childhood ghosts in the curve of a smile. The unconscious is a labyrinth with no minotaur— just mirrors breeding mirrors. So I chose the clean arithmetic. If you want my body, say body. If you want my knees, say knees. Use is a verb without metaphor. It has weight. It has duration. It leaves marks I can catalog like saints catalog relics. Here: the wrist, faint band of rope-burn, three centimeters. Here: the shoulder, crescented teeth, four small moons. Proof of transaction. No subtext. In surrender there is a strange geometry. A narrowing of variables. A quieting of the terrible choir of what-did-you-mean. When I kneel, I am not unraveling motives. I am not excavating your mother’s grief or your father’s silence. I am not a detective of your damaged cathedral. I am a surface. I am sensation. I am the measurable field. And in that field I exist without speculation. Some call it self-destruction. They prefer their illusions upholstered. They prefer love that requires translation, faith that requires footnotes. But I have seen too many counterfeit halos. Better the visible welt than the invisible lie. Better the contract of flesh than the fog of intention. When the palm descends and the nerve-flare sings up my spine, there, is certainty. Not romance. Not destiny. Not salvation. Just impact. Just contact. Just this body answering to gravity. And afterward, alone, I trace the swelling map of myself as if I were both cartographer and country. I press the tender place and feel the sharp starburst. Yes. Still here. Still real.

91

And all the shooting stars became planes of freedom Sowing bombs on schools, and hospitals, and the rubble homes Demolition rained and kept raining, rising a wave of a million refugees Those lucky recent amputees who survived amidst the elimination of entire generations The shooting stars are lost in the clouds of smog The planes will return with their gas and their bombs Until the last of us is no longer able to sing our patriotic song The rivers filled with blood will run dry one day and our bodies will decay on the seashore where we, the aggressors, lay until the last of us has died and prophecy will finally be realised, a wait of three thousand years will cease but your Promise Land, from the river Nile to the drying Euphrates, lays spread across the mass grave of the authentic natives

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Erik_Daniel_Herman

Mar 11

Mar 11, 2026 at 10:45 PM UTC

proctor

Sleeping Goliath Slain, David's Slingshot (manufactured by Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon) to Blame

And all the shooting stars became planes of freedom Sowing bombs on schools, and hospitals, and the rubble homes Demolition rained and kept raining, rising a wave of a million refugees Those lucky recent amputees who survived amidst the elimination of entire generations The shooting stars are lost in the clouds of smog The planes will return with their gas and their bombs Until the last of us is no longer able to sing our patriotic song The rivers filled with blood will run dry one day and our bodies will decay on the seashore where we, the aggressors, lay until the last of us has died and prophecy will finally be realised, a wait of three thousand years will cease but your Promise Land, from the river Nile to the drying Euphrates, lays spread across the mass grave of the authentic natives

18

goddess of the celestial halls behind my eyes who wears the rainbow as a cloak and maps intergalactic terrains within me Satyrs dance on the vaporous misty stairs peeling the veil of synesthesia to reveal a vanilla scented pan flute forrest where clocks stand still for months to dissolve in a wink telepathic machine elves step out from the shadows bouncing in tangerine and turquoise gabardine's offering silent secrets of holographic dimensions where fragments all fuse into holistic singularity handing me a cedar Midas-touched brush before vanishing back into their black brane realm hanging over the sky and down through the ground on strings impenetrable by light & invisible to uninitiated eyes transcendental transmissions cascade through me fragmented constellations stream in luminous waves emerging out of my vessel onto the canvas with coalescent brush strokes in a full-bodied paint storm the chapel of sacred mirrors shimmers on the shore of springs undying ocean under the dome where the apricot sun beams feeding the flowering greenery rolling on ancient hills ancestral voices whisper a spellbinding mantra painting a coup de maître in sleeps dream kingdom with hypnotic hallucination activating frequencies i melt into the cosmic incense smoke pools of star dust

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Erik_Daniel_Herman

Mar 11

Mar 11, 2026 at 10:45 PM UTC

jacquesharvey

reflections in the chapel of sacred mirrors

goddess of the celestial halls behind my eyes who wears the rainbow as a cloak and maps intergalactic terrains within me Satyrs dance on the vaporous misty stairs peeling the veil of synesthesia to reveal a vanilla scented pan flute forrest where clocks stand still for months to dissolve in a wink telepathic machine elves step out from the shadows bouncing in tangerine and turquoise gabardine's offering silent secrets of holographic dimensions where fragments all fuse into holistic singularity handing me a cedar Midas-touched brush before vanishing back into their black brane realm hanging over the sky and down through the ground on strings impenetrable by light & invisible to uninitiated eyes transcendental transmissions cascade through me fragmented constellations stream in luminous waves emerging out of my vessel onto the canvas with coalescent brush strokes in a full-bodied paint storm the chapel of sacred mirrors shimmers on the shore of springs undying ocean under the dome where the apricot sun beams feeding the flowering greenery rolling on ancient hills ancestral voices whisper a spellbinding mantra painting a coup de maître in sleeps dream kingdom with hypnotic hallucination activating frequencies i melt into the cosmic incense smoke pools of star dust

27

i haunting memories ooze from my pores condensing in the heavy atmosphere. wave after wave of ethereal static flashes behind my eyes pulling me above the serene rot & the percussive drumming of the downpour outside. spellbound in a dizzy trance i stare into the reflective looking glass waiting for the stranger in the mirror to blink first. ii sitting in a creaky rocking chair watching black-&-white russian films on a bulky, box, console television. the fork pronged, bunny-ear antenna and massive protruding knobs and buttons distract me, bathing in the salt-&-pepper static. i peer to the left. on the rusted windowsill on the other side, four empty glass bottles stand: two green, two clear - filling up with the buckets of pouring rain. outside, horses graze in the flooded marsh - their soaked manes falling flat against heavy necks lasso tied, with a noose fixed to fence posts. I pity yet envy their nylon-chained fate. in the fireplace embers of a coal fire flicker. ashy smoke dances with the dust suspended in the grey light cast by the CRT TV screen. an aggressive glow, haunting. iii braving eden on margate street reading... writing... painting... moving and existing through tinted layers. six shillings a week for the meek, begging to eat anointed fruit & man-made vegetables. swept up in a tornado of unaccustomed genius i sit singing. my blues bleeding into latin grooves moving me through the dissonance of frowning echoes. iv [front page] crisis after crisis, screams the black ink. **** it. another hundred-and-eighty dead. bombed for attending school - but the other news said brown girls don't even get to choose. someone's lying, or, more likely, I've lost my mind. > 2nd page I don't know who is worse.... Noem, or Noam ¿¿¿

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Erik_Daniel_Herman

Mar 11

Mar 11, 2026 at 10:45 PM UTC

Rob_Bruwer

schizophrenic news is normal in the times of fascistic hypereality

i haunting memories ooze from my pores condensing in the heavy atmosphere. wave after wave of ethereal static flashes behind my eyes pulling me above the serene rot & the percussive drumming of the downpour outside. spellbound in a dizzy trance i stare into the reflective looking glass waiting for the stranger in the mirror to blink first. ii sitting in a creaky rocking chair watching black-&-white russian films on a bulky, box, console television. the fork pronged, bunny-ear antenna and massive protruding knobs and buttons distract me, bathing in the salt-&-pepper static. i peer to the left. on the rusted windowsill on the other side, four empty glass bottles stand: two green, two clear - filling up with the buckets of pouring rain. outside, horses graze in the flooded marsh - their soaked manes falling flat against heavy necks lasso tied, with a noose fixed to fence posts. I pity yet envy their nylon-chained fate. in the fireplace embers of a coal fire flicker. ashy smoke dances with the dust suspended in the grey light cast by the CRT TV screen. an aggressive glow, haunting. iii braving eden on margate street reading... writing... painting... moving and existing through tinted layers. six shillings a week for the meek, begging to eat anointed fruit & man-made vegetables. swept up in a tornado of unaccustomed genius i sit singing. my blues bleeding into latin grooves moving me through the dissonance of frowning echoes. iv [front page] crisis after crisis, screams the black ink. **** it. another hundred-and-eighty dead. bombed for attending school - but the other news said brown girls don't even get to choose. someone's lying, or, more likely, I've lost my mind. > 2nd page I don't know who is worse.... Noem, or Noam ¿¿¿

65

Clutch of Pearls (haunted by Evelyn McHale) How was he to ever say what afterwards could not be said, how was he to visit the empty crater where your body no longer lay spread. "Evelyn, mortal love has far more life than immortal heartbreak. Your pain is real but distorts the way you perceive the picture. A mirror paints more truth than that which whispers those things of which you are terrified ... you were her daughter, not your father's wife. How do the living approach the grammar of the fallen? Foreign dimensions could never map the directions back home. Did it wound so deeply that crashing from Luciferian height seemed gentler than weight of tomorrow? They called it sleep... that terrible, curated sleep your body arranged upon the crumpled altar of mangled steel, below the Empires statue where yesterday's children are sacrificed to the gods of tomorrow's trauma. Those pearls, appearing deceptively soft, unscratched, still glimmering as a noose around your throat. Satin gloves untorn. Silken stockings unrun. Ribboned heartstrings, forever undone. Your picture, your grace - perfect Roman discipline even in eternal descent. You burned your dress, you burned them twice one flame burned in khaki memory, another torched the vows promised by the gown charred, once white. A lie is forgiven when what is broken would never arrive, your two rehearsals for a brighter future were lost to a one way bet on an immediate departure. You were a daughter, not a bride to grief. Not consort to despair... yet, what is unquestionable and stands with refute - something paternal in the century pressed its thumb on and through you. How are we to ever speak? How are to see beyond the veil? Haunted by the photograph stained on my minds eye. I'm terrorised by the human experience your life, even in death, beautifully portrayed. A student of the art which breaks time-space shot your face, stellified. His lens found your beautiful sleeping effigy before the sirens lit up your lifeless radiance. Timeless cover on time magazine, a photographer performed a resurrection. Now undead, you haunt me. A photo frame trapped you in purgatory. A photograph forever framed you. Fixed you. The image traveled faster than your name. Beauty made scandal. Stillness made spectacle. A broken body rendered symmetrical by steel and chance. It would have taken so little, one interruption, one hand at the shoulder, one inconvenient kindness to redraw the hour. Instead, the car received you. Metal flexed. History did not. Now you persist not as pulse but as composition. Students lean closer. Critics remark on the serenity. No one can photograph the final argument inside your chest. How are we to speak of you? Was there happiness once - a brief republic of light before the referendum of gravity? We will never know. We only know the image - that immaculate collapse... and the lie it tempts us to believe: that death can look peaceful. He would have begged, perhaps. He would have promised ordinary mornings, unremarkable years. He would have chosen you breathing over you beautiful. And here is the cruelty: the world remembers the posture, not the pain. How are we to speak of you without becoming accomplice to the frame? Pearls at your throat. City beneath your back. Silence perfected. And all the living left asking whether love, arriving one hour earlier, might have been enough.

0

Erik_Daniel_Herman

Feb 23

Feb 23, 2026 at 6:55 PM UTC

Rob_Bruwer

Clutch of Pearls (haunted by Evelyn McHale)

Clutch of Pearls (haunted by Evelyn McHale) How was he to ever say what afterwards could not be said, how was he to visit the empty crater where your body no longer lay spread. "Evelyn, mortal love has far more life than immortal heartbreak. Your pain is real but distorts the way you perceive the picture. A mirror paints more truth than that which whispers those things of which you are terrified ... you were her daughter, not your father's wife. How do the living approach the grammar of the fallen? Foreign dimensions could never map the directions back home. Did it wound so deeply that crashing from Luciferian height seemed gentler than weight of tomorrow? They called it sleep... that terrible, curated sleep your body arranged upon the crumpled altar of mangled steel, below the Empires statue where yesterday's children are sacrificed to the gods of tomorrow's trauma. Those pearls, appearing deceptively soft, unscratched, still glimmering as a noose around your throat. Satin gloves untorn. Silken stockings unrun. Ribboned heartstrings, forever undone. Your picture, your grace - perfect Roman discipline even in eternal descent. You burned your dress, you burned them twice one flame burned in khaki memory, another torched the vows promised by the gown charred, once white. A lie is forgiven when what is broken would never arrive, your two rehearsals for a brighter future were lost to a one way bet on an immediate departure. You were a daughter, not a bride to grief. Not consort to despair... yet, what is unquestionable and stands with refute - something paternal in the century pressed its thumb on and through you. How are we to ever speak? How are to see beyond the veil? Haunted by the photograph stained on my minds eye. I'm terrorised by the human experience your life, even in death, beautifully portrayed. A student of the art which breaks time-space shot your face, stellified. His lens found your beautiful sleeping effigy before the sirens lit up your lifeless radiance. Timeless cover on time magazine, a photographer performed a resurrection. Now undead, you haunt me. A photo frame trapped you in purgatory. A photograph forever framed you. Fixed you. The image traveled faster than your name. Beauty made scandal. Stillness made spectacle. A broken body rendered symmetrical by steel and chance. It would have taken so little, one interruption, one hand at the shoulder, one inconvenient kindness to redraw the hour. Instead, the car received you. Metal flexed. History did not. Now you persist not as pulse but as composition. Students lean closer. Critics remark on the serenity. No one can photograph the final argument inside your chest. How are we to speak of you? Was there happiness once - a brief republic of light before the referendum of gravity? We will never know. We only know the image - that immaculate collapse... and the lie it tempts us to believe: that death can look peaceful. He would have begged, perhaps. He would have promised ordinary mornings, unremarkable years. He would have chosen you breathing over you beautiful. And here is the cruelty: the world remembers the posture, not the pain. How are we to speak of you without becoming accomplice to the frame? Pearls at your throat. City beneath your back. Silence perfected. And all the living left asking whether love, arriving one hour earlier, might have been enough.

122

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you If you want a partner Take my hand Or if you want to strike me down in anger Here I stand I'm your man If you want a boxer I will step into the ring for you And if you want a doctor I'll examine every inch of you If you want a driver Climb inside Or if you want to take me for a ride You know you can I'm your man Ah, the moon's too bright The chain's too tight The beast won't go to sleep I've been running through these promises to you That I made and I could not keep Ah but a man never got a woman back Not by begging on his knees Or I'd crawl to you baby And I'd fall at your feet And I'd howl at your beauty Like a dog in heat And I'd claw at your heart And I'd tear at your sheet I'd say please, please I'm your man And if you've got to sleep A moment on the road I will steer for you And if you want to work the street alone I'll disappear for you If you want a father for your child Or only want to walk with me a while Across the sand I'm your man If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you

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Erik_Daniel_Herman

Feb 1

Feb 1, 2026 at 2:32 PM UTC

Leonard Cohen

I'm Your Man

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you If you want a partner Take my hand Or if you want to strike me down in anger Here I stand I'm your man If you want a boxer I will step into the ring for you And if you want a doctor I'll examine every inch of you If you want a driver Climb inside Or if you want to take me for a ride You know you can I'm your man Ah, the moon's too bright The chain's too tight The beast won't go to sleep I've been running through these promises to you That I made and I could not keep Ah but a man never got a woman back Not by begging on his knees Or I'd crawl to you baby And I'd fall at your feet And I'd howl at your beauty Like a dog in heat And I'd claw at your heart And I'd tear at your sheet I'd say please, please I'm your man And if you've got to sleep A moment on the road I will steer for you And if you want to work the street alone I'll disappear for you If you want a father for your child Or only want to walk with me a while Across the sand I'm your man If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you

46

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day and the best at ****** are those who preach against it and the best at hate are those who preach love and the best at war finally are those who preach peace those who preach god, need god those who preach peace do not have peace those who preach peace do not have love beware the preachers beware the knowers beware those who are always reading books beware those who either detest poverty or are proud of it beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average but there is genius in their hatred there is enough genius in their hatred to **** you to **** anybody not wanting solitude not understanding solitude they will attempt to destroy anything that differs from their own not being able to create art they will not understand art they will consider their failure as creators only as a failure of the world not being able to love fully they will believe your love incomplete and then they will hate you and their hatred will be perfect like a shining diamond like a knife like a mountain like a tiger like hemlock their finest art

0

Erik_Daniel_Herman

Feb 1

Feb 1, 2026 at 2:32 PM UTC

Charles Bukowski

The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day and the best at ****** are those who preach against it and the best at hate are those who preach love and the best at war finally are those who preach peace those who preach god, need god those who preach peace do not have peace those who preach peace do not have love beware the preachers beware the knowers beware those who are always reading books beware those who either detest poverty or are proud of it beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average but there is genius in their hatred there is enough genius in their hatred to **** you to **** anybody not wanting solitude not understanding solitude they will attempt to destroy anything that differs from their own not being able to create art they will not understand art they will consider their failure as creators only as a failure of the world not being able to love fully they will believe your love incomplete and then they will hate you and their hatred will be perfect like a shining diamond like a knife like a mountain like a tiger like hemlock their finest art

43

(i) rising off the table ether fumes mute yesterday's voice giving birth to the future's tongue rejoice rejoice for a poetic *********** king is born in bedlam. southern cross hanging above the cradle of mankind shining brighter than pit of kimberlite mines hollow space inflated breathing life into language's diaphragm. preaching poetic alchemy & fashioning blood into ink pound for pound no illusionist would dare take on the wordsmith with butterfly fused bee sting verse. (ii) smoke rises, seeping through scattered torn limbs among rubble, shards of glass and melting plastic dolls. under the waning crescent moon the closing chapter opened a new book. Begorrah! Deborah, the queen honey bee has flown off leaving behind her hive, ditching the colony death to her family! (iii) in a field of sunflowers engulfed by flames a blazing tower of hellfire fanned higher by the chemical rain. asteroids crashed into volcanoes as magma shot exploding a sea of lava rose bubbling burning through the landing. Icelandic clouds of ash soaked into the sky blanketing & blacking out sunlight casting a shadow of suffocating night over the field unyielding to morning. curtain curtail darkness dulls bright we wait for a dragon to fight the dying of night.

0

Erik_Daniel_Herman

Feb 1

Feb 1, 2026 at 2:30 PM UTC

Rob_Bruwer

notepad poems (i regrettably, probably wrote)

(i) rising off the table ether fumes mute yesterday's voice giving birth to the future's tongue rejoice rejoice for a poetic *********** king is born in bedlam. southern cross hanging above the cradle of mankind shining brighter than pit of kimberlite mines hollow space inflated breathing life into language's diaphragm. preaching poetic alchemy & fashioning blood into ink pound for pound no illusionist would dare take on the wordsmith with butterfly fused bee sting verse. (ii) smoke rises, seeping through scattered torn limbs among rubble, shards of glass and melting plastic dolls. under the waning crescent moon the closing chapter opened a new book. Begorrah! Deborah, the queen honey bee has flown off leaving behind her hive, ditching the colony death to her family! (iii) in a field of sunflowers engulfed by flames a blazing tower of hellfire fanned higher by the chemical rain. asteroids crashed into volcanoes as magma shot exploding a sea of lava rose bubbling burning through the landing. Icelandic clouds of ash soaked into the sky blanketing & blacking out sunlight casting a shadow of suffocating night over the field unyielding to morning. curtain curtail darkness dulls bright we wait for a dragon to fight the dying of night.

45