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May 2014 · 1.0k
The Mushroom
RAL Dobbins May 2014
I stand amongst, under my feet, my leaves of last year's death toll.
The dried old leaves of my own yore, to which belongs the great sea of mold.

Today and tomorrow, as I grow older, there is a shriveling in my head.
With each day next, I'll surely step, my stomach fills with dread.

Softly I stand, plainly in the ground, between the shadow and the trees.
My feet don't make a sound, and my breath is held at ease.

Now, I 'am a Nyctophiliac; a lover of the night,
I have watched false stars begin to rise, and sing louder than the light.
May 2014 · 470
~To Night
RAL Dobbins May 2014
You and I are like a long distance relationship that's stretches as far as my backyard.
I look out my bedroom window every evening and watch you change in and out of your twelve dresses, catching glimpses of your naked body without you noticing.

We are the wordless poets who write poems for our nicotine needles and wine addictions.
You lay beautifully on the clouds, as I lay quietly in my bed, and that's the closest we'll ever be with one another.

You don't realize that you are the one of whom my thoughts drift always when I set fire to my mind.

My soul yearns to rest in yours and dream until I die.

We could wrap ourselves in ribbons of moonshine and call ourselves a song to remember, and fall like leaves into each other while we sing sub-natural songs.

The sun is in your blood, your water is in mine.
For you I'd walk endlessly until the end of time.
Read books that were never divine.
My Dear; let us kiss until we die.
The wine is a symbol of unity.
Any other questions, just ask.
Apr 2014 · 463
The books who grow legs.
RAL Dobbins Apr 2014
Friends leave like the leaves in Autumn;
slowly, inevitably, and softly flowing down to decay amongst the ground and the wind.

But there's always those few stubborn dead ones that somehow stick to the twigs.
Remind yourself to keep close to those ones; don't let them fall and they won't let you.

The same could be said for the books who grow legs, yet they're always sneaking out the back door.
Ask yourself who the books who grew legs are.  There is no wrong answer, except for one.
Apr 2014 · 309
Haiku esq.
RAL Dobbins Apr 2014
When words have been killed,

You will find yourself in love,

But without words; gone.
This piece had a name, but I forgot it.
RAL Dobbins Apr 2014
I can hear it tapping on the bedroom door of my conscience,
a silent wind that's playing Louis Armstrong on a broken record player.
There's an orange rain spilling from a street lamp into my bedroom through a un-curtained window.

I lay in my bed, and though I wished I was dead, all of my thoughts were turned to you.
I can feel your haunting claws embracing my body like a desire too deep for the sea, and yet, I'm alone tonight.



You never liked how I turned my body into a book, but you never complained.
I'am a ****** good story to read.
A mystery novel written by a long dead author.

The orange rain drops 10 feet from the window and lands sideways on my wall.
It drains into the cracks of my closet door frame, and sets a light of God from within.

Soft cotton blooms under my sleepy carcass and folds between the crevasses of my form, and I become a moaning chrysalis with a fire set in it's chest.
Maleficence and wine swarms like wasps above my head and they're both drowning in the city light, the orange light.

The city light, the orange light.
The city light, the orange light.
Apr 2014 · 1.2k
When boardwalk sex breathes.
RAL Dobbins Apr 2014
It's nearly summer.
The best time of the year; undoubtedly.

A festering of walking and breath,
half naked woman on sand and ice cream,
and I, alone on my boardwalk, dreaming of lines that tell stories,

not paying any attention to anything that is happening.

That's the moment when a human finds a way to make love out of thin air on a boardwalk.
RAL Dobbins Apr 2014
Wisdom doesn't come from time,
no,
Wisdom comes from those who see a light,
yes,
Wisdom is a thing to be feared,
yes,
Wisdom can be the final end of existence,
no.
This poem is a centipede,
yes,
it crawls on it's hands and knees begging for knowledge,
no,
it crawls because it has forgotten it has feet to stand on,
yes,
it crawls because it is scared,
no.
The centipede crawls because it knows no other way than

.This.
Wisdom
R.A.L. Dobbins
Mar 2014 · 256
Miss them. (Haiku)
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
Friends don't leave easy,

It takes time for them to go,

They leave like bombs though.
Mar 2014 · 2.6k
The pizza haiku
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
"Pizza is my life,
I will eat it all day long,
All the fat is mine."
Tis the American dream.
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
(Putin your foot down)
Son of ***** Putin,

Don't ****** Ukraine will ya,

The world was fine *****!


(Political breakfast)
Obama has toast,

Romney has some grape jelly,

Lets have breakfast now.

:Haiku co-written with J.L. Johnson:
I wrote the first Haiku on my own.

I write haiku with my friend J.L. Johnson sometimes, and we made a baby eating breakfast.

More comedy haiku to come soon.
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
It still smells like human iron in your pool.
There's a crack in the concrete where the bullet stopped.
It still smells like human iron by the side of your pool, there's a stain.
I still can't find where that bullet went.

I always thought that your "love" of the higher life was overrated.
Nobody ever talked about how great it is to be rich as much as you did.
Even though you talked about it so quietly, most of the time.

You spoke a lot about Daisies.
I'm more of a Lillie type of person.

There are a lot of people in New York, Gatsby. Too many people in New York.
New York only needed you, Gatsby, but it looks like New York didn't want you anymore.
That's not sad though, is it?

Carraway's book is like gold.   I bookmarked eight of my favorite pages in it with yellow cigarettes.  I'm too afraid to smoke them.

When your old mansion was bought I expected to see you as a ghost in it,
you weren't there.
That green light across the bay isn't there anymore, it's red now.
I believe I'm sleeping in the same bedroom you once did.
You aren't one of those ghosts that haunt a house, you haunt a human concept of want.

I wish I'd never bought your house.
I'm going to tear this place down.  Along with Nick's old place next door.
The memories here in these empty, furniture filled rooms, are unbearable at best.

Of course they're not my memories, but I'd be a familiar person to you if you knew me.
I smash and break things, and then retreat back into my money and vast carelessness.

Farewell Jay Gatsby.
From the perspective of the man who bought Gatsby's house after he died.
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
Write about socks, she said...


Write about socks, she said.
She likes socks, I guess.
Socks are cool, she said.
Socks are sock are socks nonetheless.

Socks are cotton clad elastic sacs,
They go on your feet and they can go up the ***.
(That last line was a reference to how I feel when I hear bull crap.)
Particularly my own when I'm intoxicated on life.

This poem is for a girl in New Jersey.

There's dirt underneath my socks, but there's concrete underneath hers'.
Jersey girl's wind is colder than mine, and it smells like one of the smallest states in continental America.
My Georgian wind always feels like a broken leaf.
I like my wind though.

There's a small draft between my toes here.
It sort of feels good.
That's what it's like when I don't wear socks though.
It sort of feels good.

As for Jersey girl.

She likes socks, I guess,

but I'm not one-hundred percent sure yet.

She is.
For Sarah.
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
I saw a naked woman's silhouette laying in the mountains this morning.
Her skin was made of trees, and her hair made of dry creek beds.
She's was asking for a name, I think it was her's she sought.

It was then I realized that she's been laying there for a very long time, and I never noticed her until just now.
This woman's naked silhouette was manefested in flesh and blood of stone and dirt.
We walk on her like ants.

When she cries, the Earth shakes in minisquel tremors that even a needle couldn't feel.
She's begging to be found.
I found her, but she does she care?

I'll never know because she's only a few mountains standing side by side together.
Mar 2014 · 319
It's midnight, Eastcoast...
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
and it feels like it's been so long since yesterday, but I'm okay.
It's normal I guess to feel this way.
I just miss things, even when they're right there.

I'm beginning to think that glass and time are evil.
I don't know why, but I just do now.
Time never stops moving and it scares me.  Glass keeps me away from things like unfiltered air I'm addicted to.

It's been months since I've last been in love with someone.
I don't care though, I guess.
Everyone becomes alone sometimes, but I'm not lonely yet.

If I forgot what the sun was, would I be too afraid to meet it again?
I can't stay in this room forever.
It's got time, and it's got glass.
I hate those things.
For now.

I think I' am just really tired.
It's Midnight, Eastcoast.
I wrote this now.
I need sleep, and I need prayer.
Mar 2014 · 536
Black Trumpets
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
The black trumpets play jazz in between the death of a girl in Chicago, and the death of a boy in Paris.

The lights of the cities they called home were the only creatures that saw them pass.

The boy died of forgetfulness to breath in the cold, and the girl died of a drunken car.

Inside both of them there once lay galaxies of purely everything.  Those galaxies still exist, but they're not in either of the children's bodies anymore.

Now they're stored in pockets of the sky, being saved for the day humanity learns the ways of making rotten skeletons come to life again.


The black trumpets play jazz in between the death of a nation of liars and lovers, and the death of a war in which no side won.

The families of the fallen nation survived, they were swallowed in a fire that never touches skin.
The armies of the war didn't win because the soldiers can never die, and that's sad.

They'll walk for eternity, and suffer things they shouldn't.


The black trumpets play Jazz in between time and space.
It is beautiful, it is brilliant, and it is cynical.

The black trumpets play jazz, and death forgets it's name.
Like a flower forgets it's been picked,

but this is not the end...
The war in this piece is a metaphor for suffering.
The soldiers who fought and never died are symbols for emotion and grief.
Altogether the meaning of the war in this poem is a direct metaphor for a singular person who has just faced something truly tragic and has lost control of both his emotions and his grief, along with his whole being of sanity.   Until death split him apart.

Thus means the quote, "...and death forgets his name."
The input "soldiers" suffer eternity in Hell, which is pretty similar to Earth these days.
Hell is an over-admired concept in modern poems to me, it's a place that most humans have knowledge of and redo too much in thought of art.
So I replaced Hell with Earth in this poem.


Pax mea.
Mar 2014 · 558
A poem about COFFEE
RAL Dobbins Mar 2014
White foam and none.
The ocean air is thick and sweet as the sea kneads it's waves that corrode the entirety of my rib cage.
It botches stale breaths to chant hallelujah, screaming mercy, yelling bliss.
The seaside is the perfect place for a cup of black coffee.

Incan bean roast on a petrified mountain.
My stomach is a dark brown lake.
The tides rise and fall with my consumption of a dark brown drink.
The moon follows my dark brown sky.
It's a dark brown dye I preside.

I can say I've kissed a bean,
but only after I used it's blood to think.
And I take my coffee naked.
Sometimes things are just better that way.
Naked.

I indulge in book ink.
I could swim in book ink.
I could use book ink as an excuse to miss a date.
When I use book ink, I drink coffee.
I drink coffee and I use book ink.
I read you can do that once, I read you could do that in a book.

I read that just being tired isn't enough these days, but coffee helps.
At least that's what I wanna believe.
I think I just like the taste,
And what comes along with it.

It's an alcohol.
I wrote this because I like coffee.

— The End —