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Feb 2019 · 139
A Hundred Words
Josh keller Feb 2019
I’m not inspirational
I couldn’t write a hundred words about myself
About my lashes, my sight, my health
My bones, organs, and mouth
The words that I speak
Thoughts I breed
Tunnels through which I bleed
The sadness on which I feed
I’ve been compared to Prufrock
I’ve been compared to Poe
Watch the ticking of the clock
My skin as white as snow
Veiny eyed, and sorrow side
Future ends and rafts subside
And for all the people like me
Can agree to disagree
That this world was too much
And not enough
There you go, a hundred words
Feb 2019 · 636
Beware, Beware
Josh keller Feb 2019
Scorpion, scorpion, who brought the pen
The tip of its tail, the needles sharp end
Poisonous dagger, To write all your wishes
******, soiled, bundled up tissues
Issues and cashews and nuts
Insanity.
Rhinoceros, rhinoceros, have you the tusk
The one on your nose, the jungled rough musk
Broken and bleeding torn from your face
Now beautiful laced girls
Discover your pearls
Thieves.
Fathers and mothers, did you bring the child
Shattered, broken, seen with both vile
Bangs and pangs broken dishes, birds sang
That night along with the screams
Did you believe
Destruction.
Artist, artists, have you the pieces
The ones of your life, sadness, defeation
The black strokes, lonely tokes
And pills and late sat to smoke
What does it all mean, by life
Uninspired.
Dictators, dictators, did you bring your people
The hobbled and squabbled, who prayed in the steeple
Who hung from the rafters, and rang with the bells
For whom it tolls, well, no one tells
And lost citizens
Vanish.
Butterflies, butterflies, did you keep your promise
Mottled, and bottled, spread across lawn mist
To be beautiful, shiny with no varnish
Your caterpillar state should not tarnish
The wings you have now
Growth.
Children, children, did you steal the money
For xanax, tricks, and acid, your'e funny
Brain dead generation
Same dread, memorization
Of all the dead jokes
Sad.
Villagers, villagers, did you burn the witch
The bloodied open stitch
That tore the wound of the town
And they all began to drown
In truths they didn’t like
Characters.
Kitten, kitten, did you trick the boy
Into finding your, mangled, ticked, body
Squashed, splattered, with marks in your back
Circled rocks, flowers, hit and smack
The dirt down flat
Betrayal.
Conscience, conscience, did you make me feel that way
For something I thought, for something I might not say
For something I did, and something I am
Why do you threaten
Why do I listen
shiver.
Ghosts, ghosts, do you really terrify
Blankets, and behind walls spy
Sheets, and bags of treats
You saw it all, naked
Through the clear square wall, sacred
Innocence.
Creatures, creatures, you dwelled in the cave
Red, glowing eyes. Blue burning rave
You crawl out at night
To get a good sight
Of all of the people passed out drunk
loneliness.

Beware this place.
Josh keller Feb 2019
Helicopter fingertips spinning like carousels and wizard’s spells
Flying above the heads of the others, birds on the wing of existence
Fifty cents and fifty burnt tents, hiding in the forest’s foliage
And spoiling meat, a treat for seethe full beasts, entreating
On the upper realm of the cranium that divides the imagined from the conscience
The very small world clearly real and the steely peeled world that your eyes construct
And puncture your thoughts and actions with imaginary people
Imaginary places and spaces and other faces
Even your own
The eyes you see in the mirror in the morning are imagined windows with screens playing
Carefully played out scenes and episodes and and anecdotes coated
And smothered in the deceit of one’s own mind
The kind mind that creates a fine land
Much grander with sand and mountains, natural fountains
Bountiful gardens, counting bars and suns and crows and people as you walk along the digital highway, computer brain, ball in nothing and nothing it is
Fizzy soda and murders in Minnesota
Catastrophes in the east, beasts
Gusting across plains, and stains of
Death and burnt woods and the lights of the ones that destroy the planet
And grand pits that aren't even there

What a beautiful place that doesn’t exist.
Josh keller Feb 2019
Words are not inherently ugly
Humans attach their grotesque behavior to the malleable medium
And money education trains
The youth about the importance of the unimportant potion
Sprinkled like lemons and grapefruit across the forest
Most and all were not tall enough to reach the nectared fruit
Textured bumpy and satisfactory and fed through factories
To make the educated money wrapped back in the loop
Scoop some Kafka soup, and chew the beetles
Bumbling and fumbling through your cheeks
Pinching beaks and streaks of lightning and thundered blood ran trickled and thud
Upon your open front steps; accepting misfits and **** and other assorted
Atrocities and monstrosities of destroying human beauty for feud and smoky wealth like stealth
In the middle of the night. Sky and pry your eyes to see the mind behind the eye you pried and spied on your inner mind that spine that ran down the central line to the bony roots and sooty
Footprints you stint and punt skunks across gardens spread with gold leaf and fake teeth that
Fed on the gold leaves and healthy sleeves of fruit ribbon sliding down their throats and training
The train that sped and fled to the brain where its caboose took refuge in the huge open space
The wasteland and sandy shores that sat on the crevice of the nestled edges across the peaks of the brain membrane that weaved and waned throughout the outer rims of the end of the circles through which you see to see.
On these slippery banks, words and earthly things are mixed by the human
Nature in a saturated and man made ugliness.

— The End —