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391 · Apr 2019
Lounge Velvet Shimmer
Derrek Estrella Apr 2019
Lounging load
On a backseat toad
As the sky corrodes
O’er the Titan of Rhodes

Sanguine smile
Immerses the child
And leaves him beguiled
By a life so mild

I was born
Without a doubt
Heeding scorn
Through paper pouts

Destitute *******
I only sell tape
Twofold swords, crass salutes
Deep heart and minds agape

Losing the point of life
To a sleek carbon knife
I am not saddened
I will be hardened

Cheer for whatever comes
And you will be deloused
In the swaths of kingdom’s sums
Amounting to a mouse

These days float on
With nary a thought
Marmalade veil on the dawn
Keeps me from the rot

Nothing will keep you
Don’t marry your hands
In a prayer so shrewd
To be as small as sand

Easily blown over
Into aloof waters
And sent away sober
Into the mile-old clotter

Perhaps I am a child
In the way I was defiled
But I was not soaked
By time’s stalwart cloak
384 · Aug 2019
The Escalator
Derrek Estrella Aug 2019
Within the daily treads of modern traversal, there is nothing quite as soul-crushing as the escalator; its narrow scope and design, its unknowingly malevolent operation. It is such a cruel wonder it performs, consigning all existence upon it to one premeditated and mandatory path. It is the string drone of the modern orchestra; the hushed machination, a persistent contender in the cacophony.
An excerpt from the series, "Modern Exaggerations".
380 · Mar 2019
Paint Time With Summer
Derrek Estrella Mar 2019
On a snow-laden path
An ice-caked mat
Innocence will make way for you
Just wait for a smile
Paint bathroom tiles
Dye coffee in vibrant hues

Time may be cold
But sure is his hold
He'll cherish what I never could
Watch your T.V.
In suburban heat
And I will remain in the woods
377 · Oct 2018
Darlings on 6th Street
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
A genie working on a 9 to 5
Faces telling him to stay alive
Oh no, no!
It is the freakiest show
Their devils sleeping under their bed
But they've got him on house arrest
Oh, why
Are we so eager to try?

Don't mistake me for misunderstanding that you had it bad
Just like your dress this predicament is just a fad

Hey, little gender-****** 
Watch for return to sender
Make sure you're by the coast
That's where they'll love you the most
No time for entitlement
Your words are sentient
Trade a board for a pen
We don't need no citizen

I got a secret
I want you to spread it
Play them anything
Show us something

A kid jumped off of the rooftops
To make his way safely to the candy shop
Oh, how
Do people notice a house?
The wise fool begged in the biggest square
They put him in the alley and they listened there
Oh, when
Did they do the "paper-bend"?

Don't mistake me for misunderstanding that you had it all
This crass crusade will surely stop at the nearest shopping mall

Here comes the space heater
With a 9 millimetre 
People say he's colour blind
Who's court, his or mine?
The joke from the chieftain 
Is that he's a Bohemian
Who you are is never born
Gotta start out forlorn

I got a secret 
I want you to spread it
Dance in the streets
Trust your heartbeat

If you are deaf, well, we all feel what we've gotta say
369 · Oct 2017
Arrleihsyuz
Derrek Estrella Oct 2017
October 30th

Words, word, and the futility of such
Or true appeal in sectioned rhymes of madness
Like Beethoven composing Blade Runner
In the midst of blue helicopter gunners

Spectator chemicals eviscerate my brain
Educationally desensitized to what I'm trained
To do, or to scream in pools of rubidium
And call back to poems of delirium

In my shelter, so deep in my room
White peroxide liquid, mangled and groomed
My heart is aqueous, love
I'm shaped by the "god-like" lingerin' 'bove

Net equation and sums enter my ear
Therefore finding themselves on paper peers
Lectures or cantankerous, droning drawls
They taste like a slave's righteous crawl

Balance life like a panther and its prey
With elegant trickles remarking on the day
And unconcievable drawings, moving fro'
The Worldwill pukes to what I sow

There is no question, this isn't one
Verses are futile under the sun
But rhyme is priority, thus authority

Digestible, like wood covered in yellow sugar
And blue butter, counting with a Cockney clock
Arrogant as he is, he smiled at her
Tick tock, and the flock is shocked
Petty Betty blessed her daughter
Loved her well 'till the police caught her

Thought-streams, and the working of the mind
Like the asymmetric butterflies of the Sistine Chapel
       Oh, believe me! That's how my brain grinds
Where the world can equate to an apple
Paper on a finger, vice versa, so long
As I can keep track of Sing's King Kong

Pink-headed jubilee in old Manila
Killing time violently on the stairs
Remember the words of mouths of vanilla
And be sure to never stare
I talk to myself and tell myself nothing
Soon, over the morn', I will be nothing
Derrek Estrella Feb 2019
Herald of the sacred keep
Thunder in his gilded hand
Stirring all the souls who weep
Into realms of floating sand
352 · Sep 2019
Alain Baptiste
Derrek Estrella Sep 2019
It's good to leave yourself looking unfinished. It gives off a sense of urgency to most common people. That way, no one will bother you and everyone will be awed by you.
351 · Dec 2018
Tend To The Horn
Derrek Estrella Dec 2018
Nothing but a forlorn pain
Phantoms of art
Snake charmers
Larva tamers
“Free Me from the sun”

Helicopter steed
Blaring Gjallarhorn
Crystalline ammunition
Shrub-like heads
Civilian militants

Snake charmers, take my hands
Sting them once again
Render me strong and heartless
Tend to my obsidian horn
It grows longer as the sun subsides

Blood on the papers
Christened for television
Whitened crusade
Negotiation for control
Count your blessings

Arm the hangars
Send the reserves
Whip the cavalry
Watch the nation
Watch them bleed again
336 · Sep 2017
Fool’s Foil/ Foil Fools
Derrek Estrella Sep 2017
The fool headed out with his heart
Checked over his shoulder for time
He wore a cigarette apart
And witnessed a rhyme
Quickened steps on New York streets
Greetings with a shaky hand
He says, “I fancy myself a deadbeat,
Nobody understands"

The fool played for his life in a bar
Stuttered every line with tension
He was everybody’s car
He worked for the pension
A mind of a kinetic brand
An isolationist caress
What's ****** into his hands
May put him among the rest

He’d be a shell to sell what is on his mind
But it’d be so bold if he sold his thoughts and time
Are the crows encumbered on his twitching tail?
Or were you so cruel to hang them up in hail?

He quickly made a tune for a boon
A derelict with a short fuse
The vain throw pity at the loons,
Who are their muse
Looking for a piece of a mind
Anything but his own
Travels in time, just to find
He can dine on the throne alone

The foil flailing on the wall
Fooling him to wail and write
Then the train of a mind stalls
Into the ceaseless night
“Write me well and write me to love”
The papers on the bookshelf say
Won’t you push them when they come to shove,
And seize that day?

You’d be a shell to sell to sell what is on your mind
But you’d be so bold if you sold your thoughts and time
Are the crows encumbered on your twitching tail?
Did the gabardines’ golden boy finally fail?

You desperately wanted to be sought
Yet you did not want to hang off the peak with a knot
Maybe you will try to linger on
And scream in streets when every chance is gone
335 · Feb 2019
Hood of Youth
Derrek Estrella Feb 2019
Before too long,
Youth learns vanity
And learns to belong
In shallow capacity
328 · Feb 2019
Marda Loop
Derrek Estrella Feb 2019
I love it when the sun is yellow
And over a crescent hill
It doesn’t hurt much, you see
It has no eyes to fill

But my driver cannot stand it
On this part of the highway
She says she cannot see
She rejects the light of day

But the sun smiles so wildly
And the roads are so hostile
That I could never stand to be
Something sullen and senile

Drive with your head open
Burn love into your eyes
Drive with your head open
And let the day suffice

I’d hate to die on beaten grass because of the glare
And make the news on Marda Pass, breeding despair
324 · Oct 2017
New Gestalt
Derrek Estrella Oct 2017
Orange lights in District Naught
The blues and browns sigh a shot
Runner reds and timid towns
Are weeping

Shame over what was sown
To exist in all unknowns
A self-given name
To hop over mountains

Dreaming in Burgundy
Must now be somebody
Oh!

Fleeting, Fleeting
Fleeting, Teeming

Limbic lights follow sheets
Of cruising clowns on the street
Nomad beds and vivid crowns
Are sweeping

Stand over District Joy
Join the sun convoy
This drifter came
From mountains for love’s fountain

Fleet-footed Carnaby
Must now be entropy
Oh!

Breathing, Breathing
Breathing, Feeling
324 · Jul 2019
By E.L.
Derrek Estrella Jul 2019
The headless lady was radiant; her ***** rested on a lightbulb, a silhouette not unlike that of a bee, yet too sturdy to be bothered by the wind. Her arms and head were replaced by a glowing coat hanger, hinting at some tragedy. She must be sought after for all the wrong reasons, by the most depraved of people. How much pain did she have to endure to be so confident in her superficial image? I’d like to see her face one day, when the light shines not on her body, but her mind.

The hand, the crafter, the smith; surely she, too, shares the pain of her image. Oh she is radiant herself, absolutely. I wonder if she feels like the lady of the painting; her body a fluorescent attraction, her head a household tool. I hope she doesn’t feel shallow and ordinary. She is one of the most vibrant people I’ve traded words with. She is a sight to behold when she wields her mind, and with it, pries open the crevice to her soul.
To my dear friend, whose eyes are purely her own.
322 · Oct 2017
Neons And Gutters
Derrek Estrella Oct 2017
He walked into the bar, a buzz in the corner
With fists upon each other
A self-appeaser, a demonizer
With a picture of Christ in the corner

A ****** posing as a mannequin
For the lost kids from the suburbs
A rockstar singing testimonies 
To its significant others

Careful, they might criticize your point of view

Its just the neons and gutters
The mundane-marveled life
The signs only omit what you realize
Its how we deal with each other
Its how we share our beds
With the promise that we're stars, no less
Its not a sign

Radio beats on null-head streets
And monotonous synchronizing
People pummel oil drums
Emphasize on heavy flooding

The local drug store is the place
For sanity verification
Latex gloves deem what we'll find
In the underbelly of this nation

Careful, they might criticize your point of view

Its just the neons and gutters
The written, free life
We see it all, but thats not realized
Why do we act as fodder?
Its how we share our beds
With the promise that we'll come back to a caress
Its not a sign

I'm not you, you're not me
I've no clue, maybe that's alright
I love peace, you hate war
We clash heads, maybe that's alright
I'm getting paid, you're a star
I don't bother, maybe that's alright
I've got kids, you're alone
We're all doomed, maybe that's alright

We'll be fine
We're divine
We've no crimes
We save our dimes
We keep time
We'll be fine
320 · Nov 2018
Consolation Day
Derrek Estrella Nov 2018
Who knows where I’ll be headed
And who I’ll be after that
To my sole credit
I laid a man down on the tracks

I’m tired in my stare
Strides hurt a great deal
Nobody’s hired to care
Pride can’t afford a meal

If Consolation Day comes
I won’t know my way home
My tonsils are flayed
My lungs are made of stone
I’ll crow
310 · Oct 2018
Bedlam Transit
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
I've been waiting for a while
Waiting on the bus, lingering Acadia road
With stark canary smiles
Tires sliding south, piercing lights through the snow

The grouching driver smiled for a buck
But it wasn't my number, just his luck
The face mistook

The madmen piled on top of one another
Spitting stories of strenuous times
Though they complained about the weather
They would do so well to shine every dime

The bus came and noticed my suit
The others followed me in pursuit
Of their boots

I am happy looking at the snow
And only feeling through the cleanest window
But everybody's in a jiving craze
I'm amazed or maybe I'm enhazed
By the speed of streets
And my halted heat

The participants of equilibrium
Took attempts at a kinetic sleep
Instead they chant, in dulled delirium
And take a peek at their synthetic keeps

Neon lights and thinking, dancing strobes
Stamping all their prints into my lobe
As the traffic probes

The wolf in withered wool
Talked about the finest winter day at the start of fall
His owner pulled a spool
Out of her spine, turned it to money, aimed a gun at her own gall

People were aroused ‘till they were pale
And the snow took on the visage of hail
It had us all impaled

A preacher in the back carried the thrall
Of every play and soon denounced them all
Then every mind’s speed-o-meter broke
The bus in that moment served to provoke
The red lights have stalled
But I am simply staring at the wall

The beautiful marmalade-
Haired lady was a victim of the locks of fate
As the buses fade
Onto pavilions of blurs into oblivion’s gate

The passengers sink past another precinct
The districts become less and less distinct
Vision is extinct

The cosmic eye’s offspring
Held a mundane life of bounding over mounds of salt
They came off of spring’s
Offering and found the true, world-collective gestalt

They fret over the facets of fossils
They seek to shine on acrimonious ant-hills
Passion is distilled

The merriest of people lie in songs
And do not feel bothered to belong
But when the bus transitions to a train
The vindictive vain are doused in pain
Queens on their knees
In well-ragged fleece

The bellowing bell-maid
Rang a tune that sang the smells of Familiar Arabia
The sums that we all paid
Meant nothing at all as golden sands enshroud grey Acadia

The replicated people do not dwell
Or belong inside my newfound well
While they seek to sell

The curl-headed mind,
Kept and groomed by the spotted hand of mercury
Grabbed the leashes of the hind
And repeated tales of great Apollo’s century

In the prints on dunes, he has found
The journey and a lack of solid ground
His bounds make no sound

The beaming castle of the once-gestalt
The gardens of the sky that never halt
The market district full of jubilee
Perpetual and peaceful entropy

Once a fool to look into the past
Now he pays attention to the mast
Once entailed his failure to the sea
Perpetual and fleeting harmony

Now, we sway
Grasp your every day
307 · Feb 2019
The Binate
Derrek Estrella Feb 2019
I simply don't believe, and I will not obtain anything from nothingness!

Oh, don't be like the fools you decry with ardor!

I believe I am true to myself.

You lie with illusions, feast on your own brain.

Feeding my beliefs in admittedly macabre manners.

Have you lost your sextant, sailor? Where is the lighthouse of your mind? Who has locked your benevolent gate?
306 · Nov 2018
Redacted Reverie
Derrek Estrella Nov 2018
The sky shifted out of excitement, malforming into the menacing child of blue and indigo. It inspired the apex of one’s thoughts, yet promised stoic impotence; a blasé response. Besides a burning Nissan, I was perplexed. Something taught me that I should be emoting, and the glove should be reading into my vortex of encumbrance. If no one acknowledges that I must be freed, shall I retain the visage of a captive? I am but a stifled, trembling man.
302 · Oct 2018
Dream #13
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
Beings with trunks for ears, duct tape for eyes, and nozzles for digits…… Oh, what horror is this? I do not dream of the world anymore, just the rotten carcass of my amygdala. Suchasmall space to wade through…. so cold, yes? Coconuts falling down pants, with pinstriped sections separated by a ragged burlap fur. Googly eyes, slick and shiny, privy in decadence. A skinned raccoon goes soulless in splendour as it receives ******* from a malnourished Mickey Mouse. Corkscrews enter the ears.
300 · Jan 2019
Earning The Cold Keep
Derrek Estrella Jan 2019
Born to beg
Human touch
Ask of it
Sell myself for it

Inauthentic thrift
Fed winter's coal
Drinking the winter sleet
A conscious envelope

Sympathy divulges vanity
The mind is borne on spines
Beaten backs and chalk lines
The factory smog blanket

The film reel is tainted
Nullified by the future
Blood is upheld through drink
Or the scraps 'neath the kitchen sink

Mistress and minstrel
Colliding in such fashion
The green of grass but the soil
Which accentuates the home

The smoking pipe for the open mind
And love's ill script
Black soot of night, laid on wheat
The farmer's purple grain

The miner earns alone
294 · Jan 2019
The Old Vineyard Gait
Derrek Estrella Jan 2019
Christened on billiard paper
Lo and fro, oh no
Love comes to the town again
And I am rendered spent
A recalcitrant pen begging,
"God knows when,
He'll hurt my beard, rest me deep under again"

Mother! Mother!
Hear my forlorn screams
They are inauthentic
They yearn to be redeemed

Father, you, sister!
Watch this cold hand
They were born spastic
Neutered with a brand

A brand that loves to burn alone
A brand that seethes, kiss the bone
Take me to a walk in your grove
I couldn't do anything in your cove
Just a lover's weary shove
Until you take me above
There, the night will reign with a shadow
292 · Jan 2019
Sundry Town
Derrek Estrella Jan 2019
One more knock to the head and it’s over
One less dreadfully said and I bend over
Say it loud from this sundry town
And I’ll keel, sober

One less lesion to bed and I’m healthy
One more lesson in lead for my safety
Say it loud in your sundry gown
Dare to take me

On the end of the road is a playground
We’ll be safe and not make a sound
Can we swing until we’re found?
No one’s around in the canopy
Envelop me

I’ll write as if life is shy
I’ll mime as if it has something to hide
I’ve a deal with the sky
Which made my hand temporary
In our canopy
286 · Jul 2019
Cornelius Gaze
Derrek Estrella Jul 2019
It felt like a drainpipe down the gullet of the actress
As she leapt out of sight of the red baroness
Asking, why do the streetlights stay blue?
And will the soil maintain its hue?

Faceless people eating capriciously
As they tenderly speak of their shore leave
As they’re foisting their dreams to their sleeves
Speaking of odd, foreign fleece

Decadent manners spoke in secret tongues
Polarized banners through brazen tar lungs
As bravado finds a new face
To win wars with one holy gaze

Something’s the matter but it’s all for nought
As the gilded Centurion claims he forgot
What he built his first child’s house upon
For all his sons are vagabonds

I mimicked a child in the way he embraced
His nascent complacence to the human race
Clinging to a wooden rail
For fear of the careless hail

A man claimed his newsboy hat kept him enclosed
For his fear that his thought-dreams would serve to corrode
The last bastions of society
Which he clings on to haplessly

The visor hung low on the Titan of Rhodes
For he knew of the judgment on one head exposed
In his position above
Where the sky belongs only to doves

Calendars festoon their tactless grace
With legions of chandeliers, forming a haze
Now, we know that the days are numbered
Yet, the fact leaves us all encumbered

Facsimiles of the nationwide veins
Will collapse next year as they fight for the grain
Now, the horse is extinct with the train
And everyone fears to remain
284 · Mar 2020
Ode to Lady Whirlwind
Derrek Estrella Mar 2020
There is a beauty, I must confess
In the roll of her eyes
She is an all-encompassing baroness
In ill disguise
There is something behind her charred lips
That I do wish to hold
But when she sharpens her lilac fingertips
I simply lose my soul

Sat still by the fire, she seemed to me
Sadly contrary to eternity
She speaks with words that one cannot teach
Her gaze beckoned me to reach

She walks to me on scalpels
I cannot deny her
She drowns my tongue
In the sound of lyres
Her name, Her name
Her name, Her name
Her name, Her name
Her name

Escapes my mouth
Through no fault of mine
She cannot be held
In the interest of time
Her age will never show too clear
When her hood falls down
The sun will kneel
There will be no sound
But her spinning heel
This conquest, so severe
Her teeth lash out like mirrors
I held her hand in fear

As she types away all of her rights
She keeps ******* tied
When she asked me to call her Eurydice
I politely declined
She threw a fleeting fit that died with a kiss
From me unto her hand
Then she said, “how could you throw away all this bliss?”
I couldn’t understand
She snapped her toes, the room bellowed
I quickly shrivelled in brilliant fright
Her nest of pearly hair swallowed me
Then she fell out of sight

The lady stood behind me
In a dress of pins
She smiled and swayed
I never saw her again
Her name, Her name
Her name, Her name
Her name, Her name
Her name

Escapes my mouth
Through no fault of mine
She cannot be held
In the interest of time
Her face will never show too clear
When her hood falls down
The sun will kneel
There will be no sound
Nor pain to feel
Her footsteps, so severe
As the pangs of her toes echo clear
I run, for I know she’s near
283 · Oct 2020
I Am a Babe in the Night
Derrek Estrella Oct 2020
Walk on babe, the night will find you soon enough. But, do not give in so kindly- it seeks to play with you for 100 hours, or 100 years; perhaps 100 years and 100 hours, I don’t know…. my glasses fell off. The best way to say it: if the day is temporary, so are you, and the night will swallow everything, from common skin to rare hues.
Don’t pull your punches with nature! Don’t let that primeval smell defeat you or good God- get a kick out of you. Nature is the piece of furniture that you bought, not the other way ‘round. So, how do you feel? Icicle fingers, sap bearing veins, rebar arms, tenderloin body, washboard neck, prison gate mouth, airstrip nose, typhoon eyes, telephone ears, coniferous hair, freedom’s mind. You owe it to nature, she coddles you.
A funny thing, then: the lifetime of a dream. Where love, bliss, sorrow, *** are not unknown, but as uncanny as they can be. Old friends may sleep it off and give you a cheque and a kick out the front door, but don’t you know what you were in their beds for? It was something true, and if you were the only one to find it in that pile of quick/messy lovers, it is truer still. So walk on babe, the technicolour night has left you, but in its hazy laboured breath, it promised to return. It swore to explode all over you- what can you do in return?
Derrek Estrella Jul 2019
The wayward boys of the forever sun
Waking away the horizon
Their passions defined through rosemary plums
They formed in the swallow lagoon

They ventured wide, they ventured tall
Smothered by Eden’s visions
Over the mountains, a nomad conch called
Of salvation coming soon

Far away, far away
Is the ship passing by
Far away, far away
Goes the dreams of youthful sighs

Far away

The skyward beasts in the splintered minds
Bumping the night ever slowly
Fantasy left the human behind
And rain shattered the sea

The spectacle of the suburban youth
Never fulfilled quite wholly
When what’s found in rocks may trouble the truth
Then paper is burnt out to flee

Far away, far away
Is the grip of society
Far away, far away
Are the visions of marmalade trees

Gone away

Schism would rise and drinks would fly
Under the closed constellations
It is no strain to desensitize
A dreamlust, starving nation

But wash it away in brevity’s breath
And visages painted in peels
Their illusions linger for cerebral death
They hid behind wooden steel

Run away, run away
For the painting is stripped bare
Run away, run way
There is fire yelling in the air

Run away

The sun has become irradiant green
And planes lumber through the sky
Hollow hands softened the screen
The sand bleeds, the sirens are shy

The forlorn kids of the Turquoise Lagoon
Have given up more than life
When the head of bliss begins to croon
Entropy will yell “good luck”

Far away, far away
Are the hands severed in the ground
Far away, far away
Lies a shell and its sound
282 · Sep 2017
A Painting On September 2nd
Derrek Estrella Sep 2017
The lake with geese flapping
The red crane, with a flag swaying over
The grass where Monks sit
The ears, where the voice is drowned
The tree, which the sun enshrouds
The cement, which the foot taps
The cart contains an Accordian that plays
The sky contains a silky cloud, fleeting
The bench of impassioned loving
The stone of thoughtful dreaming
The shore, harboring harmony
The streetlamps, harboring wanderers
Derrek Estrella May 2019
So much pain
Outrun the brain
Situated under chandeliers
In the old, ailing cavern
Reverberating ghouls
Lick the well of my ear
And now I am frightened
By the notion of the sun

Twisted asunder
Incisive thoughts
Corrupted domain
I live under a sky blue dome
A construct of my headmasters
Where I roam
Restless in the gloam

The brain has weighed me down
To my knees
I cannot find my knees
Or my eyes
My crooked fleece cannot protect me
From the chartreuse breath of the past

Life does me no favours
Therefore
I will give it everything
Until I am hollow and adjusted
Senile and peculiar
Must the brain remain?
Must the brain remain?

My words are a disservice
To the motions of the planets
They cannot grace this life
How little it all may matter
278 · Oct 2018
Here Comes Auderre
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
In the velvet screening of the midday
I found something funny to say
I recall its principle, man it was whimsical
But then came the friar in black

He said, “I hope we can reject you a crowning
Hope it didn’t rot within your morning
This is all proleptical, simply reciprocal
We’ll store the proof of it on a rack”

Then!

Here comes Auderre with the stupefying stare
Sauntered like a soul with a sultry smell
How could I not see her audaciously
Luring me into the well?

She said,
“I’ll repeat a story- it is vaguely auditory-
Of the cellar in my room
I kept myself well groomed
Like a baby to the mind”

“Take dutiful care, for to repair’s to impair
So sit rather comfy for now
We’ll whiten you yet, somehow
Make your gears grind”

Here comes Auderre with the stupefying stare
Woke me with the pull of a morning bell
How could I not see that she’s into me?
It only happened after I fell

Through the afternoon of the Cornwall grind
The whitewalls spin in time
My lady is redacted through a codeine flow
And the syntaxation starts to go

Here comes Auderre
                                  Oh, she looks like hell
  I can’t see
                                                  I fell
276 · May 2019
By Ezekiel, I Am Ill
Derrek Estrella May 2019
Do you look down at me?
Oh, I look up at you!
You! You! You!
Look down at me? Me?
I am nothing, by Ezekiel!
Shut your vagrant mouth.
You close it, like a confounded swine!
My God!
Stop looking down at me!
Not me! Not me!
I am feeling violent today.
Oh, very severe.
You, you, you.

I am feeling like a ruffian.
Today, and other days.
It is not like other days.
Want to be gone today.
Pick at my brain-
Oh, be gone today.
Ah. Ah ahhhhhh
Gone, gone, gone
Go go go
Going to a-go-go
To ****** row
Sweet baby Jezebel
Orange crooner Mimir
Take me to the sempiternal nest
Rest rest rest.
274 · May 2019
Forge A Name
Derrek Estrella May 2019
Here is one last sentiment
All in rightful luck
Hearken to the sediment
The city where you’re stuck

Where must we go?
My mind is cloaked to useful things
Who will we follow
Into the evening’s ring?

You must forge a name
Lest you be maimed
By fortune-starved fame
And young, vacant dames
273 · Jul 2020
Body on Brain on Body
Derrek Estrella Jul 2020
Such a crying shame
That my frail body
Could so concisely
Imitate my brain
273 · Jun 2020
The Lashing Mane
Derrek Estrella Jun 2020
So beset was I with the city’s ills that I had decided to make it muse and dog. It would be from there that I would attain character and breed disdain. It was the city’s beating sun that made my skin crawl with darkness, the streets’ sharp nights that would eviscerate my wiry gut. In the beating, repulsive core of it all: the architect of my passage into all loves unknown. In that quick breath, I am not made a cynic by my pocketed demeanour. The cynics are stiff to love and unmoved by devotion. I am more brutish than those tired men; younger and filled with lashing virility. Through peaks and troughs, by veins and alleys, I am made whole and aware by motion and truth. This truth, I know: that master will cede control to the mammal, that frivolity will make way for chaos. In the age of tired bliss and hopeful terror, I could fasten myself to the reins and decry with swept breath; a vain dust in the wind. Instead, I will run and in that moment, be given up to love. A love so supreme it may gnash and look hideous. It is ill enough to think, and such incisions are the armour of the valiant.

I will stare at impudent reflection, and he will riposte with words that will tear at my suppositions. He will make me absolute- by my doing, and mine alone. In the simple hour, I see that every small movement is a microcosm of my Self. The act of lighting a match is then diluted into the whimsy of sparking the torch with nuclear fission. To be ablaze, then, is good enough and will atone me of my heritage- a heritage of vanity and shallow delight. When all dreams converge upon me, my shackles will cut me and throw me into the loose embrace of freedom. It will be painted in the image of *****, and all peers may peer and gawk, but not me. I have spent the past gazing through stolen periscopes, and piecing that frame of entropy in such lost silence. When the hawk of summer is finally shot dead by the falconer, he will steal its skin and thrive as the griffin of cold bedlam- where nothing grows to be forgotten, and nothing thrives to be forsaken. I will keep one hand open and one eye hidden, to shield my intentions and maintain the prized mark. There, am I not made man and bright by such exodus? Am I still the furrowed animal with sunken brow, sleeping at the behest of the sunset? If salvation will not follow, then I will afford myself time to wait and simmer in the tender visions of tomorrow. Be assured, though, that I lie in wait like the two-legged beast- the same beasts that crawled through the dagger sands and drowned under careless seas. In plight, I retain my name and definition. My mane is left unkempt as it desecrates the horizon behind me- soon to be below. I lie, herdless and tamed by instincts of the Bedouin- a steep and supple corpse. The sun too, knows my name now and it wishes to dominate me. When the white light swallows the grass ahead, I will climb-never crawl- to my cellar and continue to toil at my ill-gotten gains, my unremarkable shape.
272 · Feb 2019
Love in Woe
Derrek Estrella Feb 2019
I must learn happiness
Lest she leave me
To mine own devices
Which have decayed in woe
267 · Aug 2019
Arms of the Pugilist
Derrek Estrella Aug 2019
I'll kiss your bruises and earn your blood
Depraved as we are, this is love
For my ills, I will take nothing in return
Mistress, mistress, you will be my weakness;
The very tantalizing death of me
Written while watching a harrowing film.
262 · Sep 2017
Jerry Estrel
Derrek Estrella Sep 2017
Jerry Estrel was a kook
He marked his grounds with white chalk
Proclaimed to be neighborhood Duke
He made a throne out of cinder blocks

His mother seems small, dreams tall
She once swayed and threw it away
She drove over his basketball
Wept and locked herself in her promenade

Jerry gave a perplexed look
She's only been like that once
When his father died, she read his book
And duly took home his dozen buns

Mother held rings ever tight
And dreamt her child to be rich
His grandest birthday gift in sight
Her wallet, merely a stitch

She dug in her mouth and cried,
"I'm sorry my son, I lied"
He says,
"Ma, I just want a harmonica for my birthday"

Jerry was of an old soul
Wrote in mad spells to sell
With light years within his control
But couldn't afford what he could not foretell

In winter, the mother, she shivered
In summer, the beggar laid down
The years gnawing at her liver
Traded her gowns for a bound

Jerry gave a limping look
Duly blamed his mother's fate
He wandered, and loved, and mistook
Every circumstance as her incarnate

Then the debt filled up to her eyes
They could not provide themselves sun
She offered him no alibis
And slept in the silent sounds of the guns

She steeled herself till she was sore
"My son, I can't buy you anymore"
He says,
"Ma, I just want a harmonica for my birthday"

Jerry traveled for a time
He had found the sights that he craved
Walked home to offer his mother a dime
But now, she dreams beneath a grave

He fell down and cried,
"I'm sorry ma, I tried"
Jerry played a harmonica for her birthday
261 · Nov 2019
A Crosslegged Dog
Derrek Estrella Nov 2019
True hacks and phonies all around, speaking through their ivory horns of pure disgust and wallowing in incompetence, ******* and kissing and mishandling their newborn children which they name in propriety and for the pearls of God that allow them to **** and **** well. I will blast them all to the deepest of hell for there they belong with me and they will be outrightly ****** by the sojourning sheiks that give their sufferers a razor-tipped ******* that they know they deserve. Where is your relatable, so enjoyable, three or four piece family TV meal that you so deeply craved after a long day at work? It is gone gone gone and now you are subject to your deepest incongruities with yourself, how dare you be such a bother and how dare you believe in your ability to inspire. If you are not feeling this frustration of never ceaselessly being able to grasp at the story that lies within the easel of the juices of your soul, then you are not- and never will be- worth anything more than some broken throbbing piece of genitalia that seethes and suckles at the broken fallacies of pure love and distraught youth. You do not know and you will never know, and if you dare you will never truly make progress for you are a vacuous, insufferable, erratic dame that is not a good piece of skin so much as you are the perfect tool for everyone: a loudspeaker stripped naked and bare for all the world to ****; a true contributor, unlike your deepest and most esteemed of peers. Aww, how does that feel? How does it feel to finally implode from your own vicarious and hollow attempts at wisdom and knowledge? What’s left to be learned has been learned, don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? Don’t you think it’s time to stop digging your ***** ***** nails into that rusted cloud of old hope and forgiveness? Everyone has left, and that is what we must deal with. You must be some mongrel to sit down like an unrepentant dog. Cross-legged and all.
254 · Dec 2018
It May Rain
Derrek Estrella Dec 2018
There, it may bring a monsoon
And you may cry under the moon
Legs shaking, nowhere fast
What will stay and who will pass?

Calm your lingering itch
Life is fleeting, tears are stitched
You need not work another day
Go home, there's naught to say

Saunter in your blanket
There's no need to ride your regret
Twist the key in
Believe that you may start again

Drone and strain your innocence
In nectar nests
The future must hold something more
Than validation that it's all a chore
There lays a door

Stay a while for yourself
The sun is domineering
A prophet engineering
Life walks on without a care
What are we to see?
We must think that we can choose to breathe
Derrek Estrella Apr 2020
Remember: no pen will cure that shaky hand of yours, nor that uncomfortable disposition. Steel yourself on your own terms, hapless and rankless hoplite. Carry your tools with their appropriate weight. Be the stone child of many a previous dream. When the vain and physical body fails you, don't fret, for you have designed it to do so. Such a moment is a call to arms, to seek derangement in all else: the soul and the brain! Dream them electric! Follow them into their demise, and be ready to pull them from the womb!
248 · Nov 2019
My Gratitude, Ana
Derrek Estrella Nov 2019
In stepwise manners, the decision is made just as the cyan sun pierces through the overcast. The cavalcade of mercurial leaves pass under the handle of my plastic chin. They are borne on the temporal gust of youth which had made its yearly return. My little heart is astounded, immersed in love’s vicarious changes without ever feeling or seeing the flesh. I listen for the chimes that bellow deeply and conspicuously through the plateau shifts. Now, towers are houses and the world is a golf ball; just as meaningful as one, too. Rest, the flakes will not stop cutting into your shoelaced skin. If there is protest in the air, perhaps you are its pilot. Believe in the haze that separates you from those you wish to touch. Crowley’s charms, planetary rings, lamplight halos make a bed that screams “float” eternally. Perplexed and flying through my own inquisitions. Within these past odd minutes, I am intimate with the world’s vein yet again.
Written while listening to "Little Electric Chicken Heart"
246 · Feb 2020
Limbless Dandelion Fountain
Derrek Estrella Feb 2020
Saffron, the pretender
Come to me in debauchery
Let me know not of this
But instead, vain camaraderie
Swiftly down the road
Forgive that violent tenderness
Of brass things
And parsimonious goodness
What teeth, critical states
Yellow signs coalesce
In this blood-drenched hour
I have lost my mind
And the light is dimmer
For this pious sinner
Listen to that gust
Two hundred and one stallions
Criticize my crystal eyes
I, the foreigner
A mistaken warrior
Dandelion child
Riding a ceaseless fountain
Holding a vase so ragged
And a sun so mild
243 · Feb 2019
Animal's Beginning
Derrek Estrella Feb 2019
This house is not my home
Nor the fields I roam
I would dream happily
Of blissful Honolee

If I hadn't given up
Childhood's sweetened cup
The animal's beginning
Traded pounds and shilling

This is rugged life
Human in our strifes
Reject the plated divinity
Reach for skin's brevity

An overture in ink
Composed on silver sinks
Marvel at the child
Who leaves their parent's guild

Lest we all be built
Of aging blood and bills
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
The sun and its veil drags along the humdrum path, like an old dog’s broken tooth, lodging itself into a decrepit chair. Right up its ****; where it belongs and longs to be loved. It suffocates, coagulates, and discombobulates the bowery citizens within the pearl atolls. By the rims of the gates, Moses receives ******* while a sojourning sheik blasts the radio. Meanwhile, the teats of Atlas are duly pounded as the mortals are aroused and grounded. Never beholden to ecumenist beauty, life lives on, defying questions. It festoons its lexicon of self-defeat and the synonyms that we waste sun on; A halcyon is redacted before long. I am left at the teeth of a sycophant and a broad-shouldered man who I adore in dangerous elan. Epigrams foist themselves upon the masts, the masts that sail us o’er the soot of the ocean, and land us flippantly onto the crystalline concentration line which is a-gaping wide.
The orifice of a primordial awaits us.
Derrek Estrella Jan 2020
O Vincent
Great poesie through dotted skies
And o'er flooded eyes
Of softest loneliness

Take my desert tongue
And immerse it, from chamber to tip
Let it burst onto crazy lip
The loose chimes of loving

And if all patterns take me
To the whims of quiet sleights
I will not flail against that night
For any place is rightly dipped in beauty

Should I find myself forlorn
In the heights o'er skipping valleys
Or the depths of sodden alleys
I will accept it in your breath
Derrek Estrella Sep 2020
Who wants to fly down the roots of water lilies?
Or through the dunes of grave men?
It is on wooden creaks of floors and idle whistles of ****** that you find your measured path. You could take a ruler to it all the same, still come up short, impossible somehow and ruthless in design.... truth nonetheless. And a careless thing that is- acceptance. So maintain the stranglehold of hindsight and pray to the yes lord and the bad omens for they might give you something you didn’t see, something you didn’t beg for. Or the farewell “no”. Or nothing entirely; the greatest of all weights for skinned shoulders.  When looking back puts forth more ill will in your movement than trying forwards then maybe it’s the right thing to feel: the feeling of good gracious disgust. So spit at your feet and it too will follow you to age and bliss beyond that, for the time being. Be it as it may, you should laugh with the skill of a parrot and cry with the tightrope walker’s unease. And bless you bless you ‘till the very end. Might as well, for that makes a fine bookmark in the shape of all things ending.
234 · Oct 2017
The Palindrome
Derrek Estrella Oct 2017
Here is the machine in pure alkene
A V2 bride needs azide
Sapiens smog for analog
The old anew, what's it to you?
Tritium
Initium

Initium
Tritium
What's it to you? The old anew
Analog to sapiens smog
Dreams azide, for the V2 bride
Pure alkene in the God Machine
233 · Oct 2018
Carapace Canvas
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
Canvas blank, canvas green
I loved an open cardboard sea
Lips are hushed in saccharine
Or cracked under the winter fee

I’ve obtained an ear for life
A taste for wisps of scattered sounds
Gone is every sacred strife
That licks my heel like hagged hounds

I’ve an eye that meets a bed
Where I lay down to breathe sincere
I’ve no limits in my stead
Nor the hatred for a mirror
231 · Feb 2020
Bicyclic
Derrek Estrella Feb 2020
The house of commerce commercializes my vignette of nostalgia through various panes. As I am lost to the neon coast of degradation, a forward conquistador berates me for my due impertinence. This migraine doesn’t match my previous excursions, as it is lethargic and fat in deep feeling. My raincoat is a bed that remains a typewriter, that which I reject. I hate it with precision. “This is not an observation, and you are a boisterous fool that rests on the laurels of institution!” But lo’, I am not that impish man! My pen is renewable, unlike my reserves of happiness. If the Quotidian Cycle remains so mundane, then who am I to adhere to the seers of ingenuity? Planets ingest the polygons that compose my mind to the sound of Igor Stravinsky. The definitions of words coalesce into a redundant gestalt, threatening to escape my clammy grasp. Brats and weasels complain of their jeans and fur, soaked in brandy and tar. I live like a dissident; this vagrant is cold to the sickening nods of animals. God, don’t let me remain an anthropomorphic beast. The suffering is daily, the void is lonesome and lays my spine on stone. Melatonin is a pensive friend, a foolhardy palliative to the disease within a footstep. I’ve no footsteps. Not any of note or worth.
Not a single thread to pride myself in. Conversations and dime trades happen around me at generous speeds while I remain a stranger. Christ, I despise my face. I’ve dug my heels into depravity, the exile from woman’s hold is a wrench in my innards. O, to even think is a crime! Who could love the mind deloused, the small and prudent mouse (but little did they know, he facilitates a disease between him and the universe). Intoxicated, my love knows no bounds, but my lust is rendered sterile and sullen. Who can hold me? Who can hold me? Who can hold me? God god god god could hold me. He is not strong, is he? Somebody hold me, now.
Oh, I know yes I need to indulge in the incessant whispers, for my status of a guileless ***** will have to suffice. A cigarette leaps out at my cursed visage, a container of maroon liquid coagulates in mine eyes. There, voices. Cyclic conversations, cyclic conversations, hep! Help! Take me! Take. Take. Take. Me! I belong in the boon, mister fowler. Take me! I don’t hold weight in this world! So take. Sedate me. Please, almighty, nullify me.
230 · Jul 2020
The Lilt
Derrek Estrella Jul 2020
Twice hardly could I believe mine eyes
As old sunset did arise
To and fro, the honeysuckle morn
That brought the nascent-sparkling dawn
So surely did I meet
The words so concrete
As grass and dew held sway
And all old scrolls had no delay
For beauty was the mare on which I rode
As the buck-toothed medallion began to corrode
Overlapping streams of great renown
All seeking the final ivory crown
In pillars of smoke, bellows of grass
The hastened steps of many a mass
Send their prayers to remorseful wind
For a useless chance to begin
The rhythms of Eunoia did spring
As the new decrepit moon was beginning
229 · Oct 2018
Exodus of the Neurons
Derrek Estrella Oct 2018
Page sticks to oneself; indentations upon indentations. Soon, it will all- or perhaps later?- it will all homogenize into a gestalt; a brain. Then, not long after that Exodus of the Neurons ™, the piece of wood will reanimate, shaking my hand and fishing for planets simultaneously, like any other sentient being that remains aware of the dome domain above us (or adjacent to?)
This is no performance, it is mere proof that my stimulant is optimal, that I breathe with vigour in my feet and weight in my fingers. It is a display of my gradual decay, foretelling the prognosis that I dare not utter: what can I do if I fall under Alzheimer’s heel? What then? Will I forget of the paragraph that I had just written beforehand? This pen, will it treat every word as a home to rest its riches in? This vagrant of a fool, he must remember his treads, the soles of the people that have led him to wherever he’s gone. What is the Joker without inspiration? What is a dancer without awareness? What is a figure without substance?
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