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148 · Feb 2021
A frugal suicide pact
Justin S Wampler Feb 2021
If we put our heads together,
we could save a bullet.
148 · Jan 2021
Control
Justin S Wampler Jan 2021
Baring barren bear-like teeth,
is it a smile, or a grimace, indeed?
whether it's pain, excruciatingly,
or blissful joy, any range in-between,
a smile is a smile is a smile,
just show your teeth.

Because there's beauty above
and
beneath.

Pins and needles
are only skin-deep,
waking up from
a troubled sleep.

A sigh, a gasp,
terrible dreams,
a simple smile
can change
everything.
Justin S Wampler Jan 2022
Something about a struggle,
relatable and common.
Some profound comparison,
or some kind of simile.

Something very human,
something about overcoming or
about accepting and embracing.
Something about relishing
in negativity,
something about addiction or loss.

Something indictive of heartbreak,
something reminiscent of love.

Something outlandish,
to stand out from the sea of adequacy.
Something something.
Words and
meanings.
Something self-loathing.

Something abstract,
something concrete.

Poetry.
147 · Jan 2015
done.
Justin S Wampler Jan 2015
I do not like reading your poetry.
I do not like writing my poetry.
147 · Aug 2022
Bella
Justin S Wampler Aug 2022
Don't turn your bowl over.

Okay, fine
you can make a little mess.

I'll clean it up and
we can go outside before I leave.

Don't look at me like that.

You'll be fine, Mom will be home soon
and she's full of love for you.

You'll be fine, I promise.

Don't turn your bowl over.
146 · Oct 2021
Aquired
Justin S Wampler Oct 2021
I have a taste for expensive liquor.
I have a taste for the cheapest swill.
I have a taste for bright summer days.
I have a taste for blizzards.
I have a taste for heartwarming moments.
I have a taste for gore and mutilation.
I have a taste for symphonies.
I have a taste for grindcore.
I have a taste for yoga.
I have a taste for cramps.
I have a taste for regularity.
I have a taste for sudden catastrophies.
I have a taste for Cuban cigars.
I have a taste for Winston lights.
I have a taste for a shirt and tie.
I have a taste for oil stained jeans.
I have a taste for ripe peaches.
I have a taste for bruised apples.
I have a taste for black & white milkshakes.
I have a taste for bitter milk in my cereal.
I have a taste for idealistic love.
I have a taste for ******* and broken hearts.
I have a taste for family gatherings.
I have a taste for abandonment issues.
I have a taste for great parents.
I have a taste for having a dead mother.
I have a taste for a half brother.
I have a taste for being an only child.
I have a taste for the company of friends.
I have a taste for solitude.
146 · Jan 2021
Anger
Justin S Wampler Jan 2021
I'm not generally an angry person,
in fact I find it to be a particularly
foolish emotion.

Sometimes though...
Sometimes my heart pumps lava.
Sometimes my fingernails leave imprints on my palm.
Sometimes my jaw cramps from clenching my teeth.
Sometimes someone parks their car
at the one and only diesel pump,
leaving me to circle the little fuel islands.
Staring out my windshield with the eyes of a shark.
Why? Why must you park at the only diesel pump?
Where? Where the **** is this guy?
How? How do you just ******* walk away?
When? When are they gonna ******* move?
Who? Who the **** does this kind of thing?

Then they come striding out
from the convenience store,
they catch me staring them down,
then I just smile
And wave.

Anger is foolish.
145 · Dec 2018
Stinky
Justin S Wampler Dec 2018
I smell like dog farts
Stinky little pffts
Whisper quiet dog farts
Stinking up the room
145 · Oct 2022
Wrong wants
Justin S Wampler Oct 2022
Some people get upset
when I'm a bit too honest.

Sometimes my grandfather
(known to me as my Pap)
will ask me
if I want to go to a toy train convention
at 8:00 AM on a Sunday,
and I'll say
"I don't want to, but I definitely will"
and he'll tell me
to just
forget it.

It's like this for other things too,
with other people.
Usually loved ones.

My cousin Jake
is sometimes late
for a birthday dinner,
and I'll say
"If you don't want to come, then don't."
Then I'll smile
because I'm hearing my Pap's words
coming out of my own mouth.

Pap.

He doesn't want someone to tag along
just because it's the right thing to do,
he wants someone to be as excited as he is.
He wants someone to want what he wants.

What do I want? How does anyone figure that out?
I feel like I've lived a life
wanting the wrong things.
Not wanting what others
have wanted for me.
Throwing away opportunities
to make others proud,
people like my mother.
She wanted me to be a man,
but I've lived these wandering years
as but a man-child who squanders
the days away with menial hobbies.
Lazy and unfocused I am,
I've been.
Always wanting the wrong things.

...
If I had a grandson
what would I want him
to tag along with me for?

What would I want my child
to want?

I don't know.

Do you?
143 · Mar 2021
Like a top
Justin S Wampler Mar 2021
Take your pants off,
and put your heels on.

Now spin for me.
143 · Mar 2022
Happiness.
Justin S Wampler Mar 2022
I want to taste the black ink bled
by my ever lonesome and worrying pen.

I want to paint the floors with
my innumerous words for
how I've been doing here.

In this **** hole apartment.

I love my apartment, wait, don't listen to me.
I'm grateful for all these golden opportunities.
Life shone brightly upon my needs.

I want to coat the back of the toilet in ****,
the bathtub in mold and mildew.

I want to rip the curtains to shreds
and ignite them into a funeral pyre.

I'll exhale smoke and smile through the carcinogens.
I'll bleed from my knuckles.
I'll snap every last pen I can find.

I'll snap every last pen.

Life has been good to me,
I'm genuinely happy.


I'm happy

and I'll **** you.
I'll **** me.
Justin S Wampler Oct 2020
Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry
Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry poetry Poetry Poetry
Justin S Wampler Jan 2022
God knows
I always hated
being loved,
being
together.
I always hate.
I hated all ways,
always.
Always. All ways.
All ways lead within.
All weighs, too heavy again.
All weight resides with kin.
I'll weigh,
I'll wait.
I'll wade through
aisle ways and
isle ways and
all I'll, I'll weigh
all aisles and
all isles and...
Anyway,
any way I'll get it
I'll take it.
I'll take aisles.
Aisles often taken,
isles on the lake and,
I'll take the taken.
All taken.
I'll ache an
alt ache and
all wait and
I'll wait in the
isles wake.
I'll wake and
all waken, and
I'll...

All..

Always
and always,
and
always and
always.
Greener with the scenery.

I feel extraordinarily schizophrenic.
140 · Sep 2022
Night noise
Justin S Wampler Sep 2022
A quite quiet little tapping.
A tapping on the window.
Glass shivering and shaking.
Brittle bones are breaking.
Wishful whispers in the dusk.
Distant voices muffled and hushed.
Tapping, time is ticking away.
Tangled tongues clicking in pain.
Furled fingers forced inside.
Shattered shards all pushed aside.
Hangers strewn across the room.
A shadow, a hymn hummed true.

Tapping. Tapping. Tapping. Fright.
Unknown noises in the night.

Stood up again by sleep.
A sickly fickle friend, indeed.
Should the dawn ever come,
then let it ******* come
like a blessed loaded gun.
Justin S Wampler May 2023
He thought she'll be sad a long time,
regardless of the beautiful sunrise.

Light broke over them and she sighed,
the warm touch of the morning rays
felt good on her closed eyes.

He saw her smile and he knew why
yet he still thought she'll be sad
a long time.

Sometimes moments like these
can last an entire lifetime.
Memory, always tangled up in
idealistic webs of rose-colored light.

Perfect as that morning was,
she was sad a long time.
136 · Nov 2023
Blown struts
Justin S Wampler Nov 2023
My suspension of disbelief
is riding on leaf springs,
and trying to enjoy any ******* thing
is a bumpy ride for me.

I just don't know
what I believe.
135 · Oct 2022
Move
Justin S Wampler Oct 2022
Brightly pale
Hunter's moon
turn midnight
into noon.

Beseech beset
beside myself
put upon you
up on the shelf.

Talks and tales
told not too soon
sunder underneath
our Hunter's moon.
134 · Jun 2022
Shoobie
Justin S Wampler Jun 2022
The promise of tomorrow
is laden with hope.
Sprinkled with gusto,
dipped in
golden idealism.

Tomorrow, an honest excuse.
A good time to see you,
a good time to
have time to lose.

Tomorrow will come
sopping wet
with the promises
of yesterday.
Wring it all out and
let's splash in the puddle.
I'll take my boots off,
I promise.

Tomorrow will feel
just like today, except...

Except tomorrow I'll have you.
Tomorrow,
you'll have me too.



Tomorrow will shimmer
with the glimmering late-June sun,
and we'll spend it it together wishing
that another tomorrow
will never come.
Justin S Wampler May 2023
Hey Candy and Chris
can't you see that this
ain't no way to spend the day?
The slots' bright lighting
make the light inside her
fade, fade away.

J-J-J-Jenny and the bets.

Hey! Don't waste it away
the years come and don't stay
when you're spinning that roulette.
Still she sits down beside them
filling up on the tidal
feelings that she gets.

J-J-Jenny

Jenny

Jenny

Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny

Jenny and the bets.
134 · Nov 2022
Old factory.
Justin S Wampler Nov 2022
Lies and deceit are a heavy spritzing of perfume,
truth and honesty are a rotting carcass in the ditch.


Both are bitter and sickly-sweet to my nose,
and if my eyes are going to water either way
then what does it even ******* matter.
Justin S Wampler Dec 2018
I, but a blessed lamb,
but aren't we all?
Sent forth dithering
into the gaping maw of life
as a sacrifice to
uh,
the um....
What's that word
that means
doing something
for the knowledge of everyone?
Whatever,
family dies,
and life goes on.
So yeah.
**** is funny.
132 · Nov 2024
The old apartment
Justin S Wampler Nov 2024
Those little white bottles
to help you smile.

The long drives to work
and home again.

You were beautiful
and miserable then.

It's easy to forget
the miserable part
when looking back.

It's easier to forget
everything about you.

But my dreams
will always remember.
132 · Jan 2021
And.
Justin S Wampler Jan 2021
Never said
there'd be another
day.

They never said so.
Yet,
here it is.

Time tells
lies,
and truths go unspoken.

Unspoken
yet,
not unknown.

Not unknown.

Last week
was twenty
years ago.

Tomorrow
I'll be dead
of old age.

But today,
there's a chance
to change everything.

To change everything.
131 · Feb 2021
Little bits of lavender
Justin S Wampler Feb 2021
Rose petals in the bathroom trash bin,
fervent phone calls in the morning.
Little bits of lavender stuck to my feet.
Debt. Balancing two lives into one,
sharing.

It's difficult, sure.

Were it easy,
it wouldn't be worth it.

No such thing as perfect.
Even if there was,
I'd still prefer it
the way things are.
131 · Dec 2023
Phoning it in
Justin S Wampler Dec 2023
Try as you might,
one can't capture the light.

More megapixels,
4k OLED monitors,
all the money in the world
can't buy you the sunrise.

Just wake up
a little earlier.

Just wake up
and fill your eyes
with ochre skies
instead of with
upvotes and likes.

The faux phones lie,
truth is only a step outside.
An amalgam of everything
always seems black
and white,
but a meer peer
through the window
will tell you otherwise.

Revel in the greyness,
the gray,
the greatness of
our hombre lives.

Wake up
a little earlier.
Put your phone aside.

Wake up
and fill your eyes
with simple truth lingering
right outside.
130 · Dec 2021
Sin
Justin S Wampler Dec 2021
Sin
Why strive?
I've been handed the world.

There's longing here,
for...
... something.

Something more?

I see my brother
from time to time.

I still see Mom.
She still chastises.
Her voice resides
deep in my mind.

I don't know
what it is
that I'm trying to convey.

I don't know
what else to say.

I'm sorry.
130 · Feb 2021
Deafening
Justin S Wampler Feb 2021
I wanna write a poem
about the silence of falling snow.

...Voila!
130 · Jun 2022
Low visibility
Justin S Wampler Jun 2022
I fancy the fierce fog,
backlit by the morning sun.

Burn off, slowly.
The day has just begun.
129 · Jun 2021
Asking
Justin S Wampler Jun 2021
Touch me.
Don't wait,
don't make
me say it.
129 · Dec 2019
Bowl movements
Justin S Wampler Dec 2019
Mouse in the toilet,
drowned in the night.
I ponder, how long
It managed to keep swimming?

I ponder how long
I could've kept swimming.

Maybe three...
Four hours?
The porcelain walls
Slick as ice.

I ponder the precarious
Balance between
Exhaustion,
And death.

Cramping legs and arms,
Needing a quick break,
Breathing water,
A black tunnel.

Was I an hour too late,
Or just a few minutes?
Had I not hit snooze,
Would the mouse still
Have been swimming?

Treading the balance?

Would it have feared me?

Would I have even saved it,

Or ****** on it?

Would it have saved me?


I need to ****.
128 · Oct 2021
Thumbs
Justin S Wampler Oct 2021
Somewhere along the way
poems became status updates.

But maybe that's not quite right,
they invited us to write
and...
We convinced ourselves
that it was worth it.

Just for the likes.
128 · Aug 2020
Self doubt and failure
Justin S Wampler Aug 2020
A great wheel turned,
And something clicked into place.
Whatever it was,
It put a smile on my face.

Now I'm sitting here wishing
I had more to say,
But maybe this is perfect
To begin a new day.

So with a stretch,
And with a sigh,
I'll relish in the bright blue sky.
I'll indulge in this feeling,
Letting myself fantasize
About goals for the future,
For the very first time.

Maybe I'll fail,
Maybe I'll fly,
But either way
I want to try.
128 · Jan 2024
Stutter
Justin S Wampler Jan 2024
Ever have something to say,
something that you REALLY want to say?
Something you're dying to express?

But you just... let it go.
Because you know
you'll never be able
to get it all out.

Now imagine that feeling
for every conversation,
every sentence,
in your entire life.


God I want a whiskey.
128 · Apr 2021
Fractionally speaking
Justin S Wampler Apr 2021
A third of a fifth a night
is three sevenths of my week,
which is two fifths of my month.
126 · Oct 2024
Happy to just watch.
Justin S Wampler Oct 2024
Perpetual intoxication is a peninsula
on which your psyche stands and
mindlessly gazes out at the water to watch
your body slowly drown in the sea.

When the only options are
a sober swim back to the shore
or merely persisting in your mindless gaze,
it's easy to forget that there's a choice at all.
126 · Nov 2018
Fuck the cunts who run HP
Justin S Wampler Nov 2018
**** this ******* ******* censoring
You ***** can wipe my ******* *******
With your ******* ******* moral high ground
Justin S Wampler Jan 2022
Confucius say,
the deeper the tread on workboot,
the harder it is to remove dog ****.
126 · Nov 2021
Spring City
Justin S Wampler Nov 2021
It was when time didn't exist.
We threw out the clocks,
and I didn't own a watch.
Couldn't keep time for ****.
It was when we tossed it all aside
for a drunken night drive
up and down the twisted skids.

We were an ode to recklessness,
a bitter song of youth.
We were truth,
we were soaked with it.
I focused on getting lit,
and not giving a ****
about anything beside
having a good ******* time.
We were the New Street crew,
the spot was only one room
but we had the bunk beds
and still pulled ******* too.

Both getting paid out,
at least until
the unemployment ran out
even then we still
kept on keeping on,
listening to those same ****** songs.
In that same ****** room,
ripping the same ****** bongs.
We were brothers back then.
We were brothers.

Clocks came back, life found us hidden.
I was waking up with burns on my skin.
I was waking up without anything
to keep me from going at myself again.
He saw that dread,
that the bitter voice in my head
always painted on my face
and it turned into a race.
A race to the end for me,
a race to be gone for him.
He was my brother,
and I was a freeloading *******.
125 · Mar 2021
A limerick.
Justin S Wampler Mar 2021
My mom thought that I was on drugs.
(Which admittedly, I guess that I was.)
Though not what she thought,
just some ***** and some ***,
but she still looked for tracks when we hugged.
125 · Jan 2022
Not me
Justin S Wampler Jan 2022
Guess what?
People ******* change.
125 · Nov 2022
Art
Justin S Wampler Nov 2022
Art
Plunged into the tides of your mind
swimming along just to find
a little space to breathe.

Crowds choke the throat of the streets
where they all came to meet
someone else to squeeze.

Now there's a sign up in the sky.
Cursive smoke spells out the end of time,
in bitter stuntplane strokes.

A brush the size of our collective hearts
comes crashing down in the dark
to paint us all anew.
125 · Mar 2021
Untitled
Justin S Wampler Mar 2021
Poetry is dumb.
125 · Feb 2022
Breakfast soup
Justin S Wampler Feb 2022
The milk goes first.
I'm tired of being ostracized by the cereal-firsters.

I've watched these freaks literally fill an entire
bowl up to the top with cereal, then try to fit
milk in. They get one solid layer of crunchy goodness
then have half a bowl left of mushy, soggy garbage.

And yes,
it's a soup.

*******.
124 · Feb 2021
Wasted smiles
Justin S Wampler Feb 2021
I smiled at a woman,
I smiled at a man,
with eyebrows; inquisitive,
but neither even grinned.

I smiled at a child,
I smiled at a priest,
with my shoulders a-shrugged,
I expected eye contact at least.

I smiled at the moon,
I smiled at a cat,
I smiled in the mirror
and I smiled right back.

I smiled in gibberish,
I smiled in phases,
why won't anyone smile at me?
Do they know that I'm wasted?
123 · Aug 2022
Only a man.
Justin S Wampler Aug 2022
Lost a piece of a me
amidst this life
of stable work
and responsibility.

Gone are the days
that I slept the sun away.

Gone are my nights
of staying awake.

I was reckless, and a blowhard fool.

Wandering that veiled path
of apathy and altered mindsets
robbed me of my love for family.
But it granted me words,
I found poems everywhere
while lost in that haze
of clouded adolescence.

I wanted to be Bukowski,
I wanted to be Keidis.
I wanted to be Dylan.

I gaze back at myself sometimes,
the boy I used to be.
The twenty-something ****-up
that hadn't a dime to his name,
that hadn't a care in the world.
I gaze back and wonder
if there was a piece of me there
that got lost in the transition
between boyhood and man.
Something left behind that
used to truly define what
I believed in and
what believed in me.
123 · Mar 2022
Bury
Justin S Wampler Mar 2022
I want to eat
until I don't feel anymore
because
when I feel
I don't want to eat anymore.




I'm going to start seriously drinking again
because
I've been doing a lot of serious thinking again.

**** rhyme.
It's been made
ten thousand times.
*******.
**** me.

If you die
before me,
I'll exhume you
and curl up
against the
cold flesh.

Finally your outside
will match
your insides.

Chilled,
and rotting.
122 · Feb 2021
Haikoozy
Justin S Wampler Feb 2021
Keep my sweet can cold.
No more hand-condensation.
Squeeze rubbery foam.
Justin S Wampler Aug 2020
Do
Don't
Do
I can't
Do
Nah
Do
It
Do it

Done.
122 · Feb 2022
Happiness
Justin S Wampler Feb 2022
God let out a sigh in the morning frost,
burying the valley in billows of thick fog
and as I drove, white knuckled, through
his great exasperation with utmost care.
I saw the evil within myself painted so
meticulously in the rear view mirror.
A toothy demon looked back at me as
I smiled, after smearing cold, gray asphalt
with the blood of some crossing rodent.
I was pleased with the double thwump
sound, indicating that I had ran it down
with both the front and the rear wheels.
Killing **** felt good that dank morning,
I relished in the thought, in the blind fury.
I quivered in delight at the idea of burning
gasoline, chuffing choking clouds and fumes
into the air to mix with this blinding fog.
I gnashed my teeth hungrily at the notion
of polluting the beauty that surrounds us all
while bouncing the needle off the rev limiter.
I wanted to watch it all perish, I wanted to
find every last happy person on earth and
drown them in a river of my filthy anguish.
I felt my anger swelling, and I swam into its
rippling currents. I dove into that sea of rage
and drank greedily of it's salted undertow.
My mind was a plane of fire, a flat rift of pain
where everything I've ever loved would never
be allowed to love anyone or anything again.
Jaw clenched so hard I felt a molar crack and
a rivulet of auburn blood trickled down my chin.
I saw my destiny flash before me in a sudden
blaze of pulsing red warning lights popping
through the dewy fog, and before I had time to
even consider an apology to whatever it was
that I called God, the inside of my windshield
became plastered with the contents of my skull
as I crashed full speed into the back of a stopped
school bus.

Finally happy,
yet still a poor soul.
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