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WJ Thompson Feb 2018
Poetry isn’t only pain
Poetry is a cup
you can fill it
with whatever you like
Did we sleep so long we never saw the sunrise?
WJ Thompson Jan 2021
I’ll mimic Matterhorn or the worn ways we window gaze and swipe left
or turn right on the green light of another cliche
If you swear gray is all the shades you’ll
put on lamps to match the grayscale duvet
Then catch me if you cat o’ nine tails
a swallowed whale,
We swear with chapped lips a waterworn promise
Maybe the Amish had it right and we’re a little bit snobbish.
I’ll Jack O’Lantern your etch-a-sketch erotica,
Not much scarier, these days, trick or treat.
Q-tips got your tongue? I’ll Question where you Came From 4 as long i Chan.
You don’t leave the house anymore except for groceries.
Catch me if you cat o’ nine tails
a swallowed whale,
Nineveh won’t wait, it’s time to break bread with danger and death.
I feel a bit obligated to explain the general aim of this poem seeing as how most of the phrases seem nonsensical (and to be honest I didn’t ascribe meaning to them until after I had written them). This started as a flow of consciousness poem, where I was really just playing a word association game with my subconscious. I was inspired (positively) by a poet on HP who has a similar abstract flow to his poems. I wanted to write something unique, out of the ordinary, and in doing so I connected with a combative energy towards laziness and cliche. I should point out that I know cliches exist for a reason, in that they capture common thoughts, feelings, or wisdom in a succinct way, and there is a certain bravery in clearly stating your feelings for all to see. I just get a bit bored by it, it’s not intellectually stimulating. On the flip side, if you hide your feelings behind too many levels of abstraction, it’s possible that neither you nor anyone else will understand what it is you’re saying.

I also have a personal annoyance with poems which are thinly veiled erotica. It’s probably a bit petty, but I’ve seen so many ****** poems on HP. The “etch-a-sketch erotica” line was about that. My exact criticism is levied at erotica which leans towards the dark, grotesque. I have genuinely seen some clever erotica poems, but I generally avoid reading such material for religious reasons.

There’s a final annoyance, other then laziness and cliche, which is political in nature. I wonder if anyone sees it?

Lastly, I haven’t thought of a meaning for “mimic Matterhorn”. I just think it sounds cool.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
It was summer's bleeding
whether on dried grass
or straw
or whatever you want to call it
soaking
Sweat from pouring instruments
that we would give
Hands outstretched to our counterparts
our falling stars
That gave shape to our words,
our turns, our learned behavior

Static kisses, that were such the darling fantasy
My, empty vase of colored strings instead of tapestry

You've, been, watching me.
Our hauntings seas, my gallantries.
Shining armor on my eyelids
Painted faces, flying starships
All my heartstrings into

Static kisses, that were such the darling fantasy
My, empty vase of colored strings instead of tapestry.

I heard that when you walk on past those doors
You're followed by the man that you had left
behind so long ago, when you began to notice,
Those silhoettes, those heated scents
That greet us from a hand to hold
A cheek to kiss, a face to miss.

We all adore the hopeful mountains in the distance
We all have planned our mansions in the distance
Grasp the walking stick and for an instance
Plan to have our mansion in the distance

But you and I
We were such the sudden contemplative types
Your icy eyes, the daisy type of deeper maybes, for a moment.

And let me tell you, it sort of strikes me how this conversation's been
such a smooth and gentle river stone for skipping
classes, distracted, by the way your eyes reflect so well this fire
stirring in my soul like sparks that rise up towards the sunset.
Wrote this one years ago, one of my personal favorites.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
It was an atmosphere.
It was an atmosphere.
It was oxygen mixed with southern fog,
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots,
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind,
The rolling hills behind property lines.

It was the question you asked,
It was the question you asked,
Not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass,
While I leaned against your Corolla,
And we sang under the overpass.

It was graffiti,
It was graffiti.
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple
hair and acid wash jean jackets,
Melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement.

It was the way the reverb spread the major 7th across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor 9th which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars), and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd,
Surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.

It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat,
soaking up the air of my A/C heat.
And the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall,
And now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all.
It was how my energy dripped away into the floods of San Jose,
And how her eyes began to sink into her iPhone 7's screen.
It's in how I long for prolonged eye contact,
It's in how close the answer is but never slips,
I'm not interested in the electric work of fingertips,
I'm interested in connection.
Inspired by the poetry slams of Livermore, amongst other things.
WJ Thompson May 2017
Sir or Ma'am,
It's not blood but my sweat that trails the sidewalk of the                
                        boulevard.
Dogs lick it for the salt.
I've given them names but they
       growl.
I wear a watch, a polo, and a prayer.
       I offer a future for you
            to entertain
for the thirteen seconds
      that I exist
at your front door

(that is)

until you slam it in my face.
WJ Thompson Jan 2021
You know well the verdant bed of aster
       stretched limb along the rolling *****
       tucked between the redwood trunks
Piercing eyes peak back with bared fangs
       melting, molding into tilted neck, curious.
In your mind, anyway, but in reality,
      the fuzzy forest creatures bend their
      backs subdued.
The earth has her muzzle on, for now.
But dragons;
Dragons are real and they like to whisper
in our ears.
WJ Thompson Jan 2021
Lately,
           I’ve been trying to
(how should I say it?)
       Fold the corners of my subconscious tremors
into creases, origami shapes
I’ve been bending the bracket
I’ve been trying to figure out
                 my Enneagram.
I'm a 3w4
WJ Thompson Feb 2018
I am wild, my akushla,
a solivigant.
But you are a cynefin.

Your kalon conceives resfeber in me.
Beasts rumble within like brontide,
they chant of redamancy, my trouvaille.

The dragoman drew me to you
Speaking of yugen
the susurruss mountains
they cured my atelphobia
Submontane caves
where our lights baltered among the selcouth crystals
Reminding me of basorexic spoondrift
breaking the moonglades you adore,
my fellow parallian.

Perhaps it was boyish werifesteria
or maybe I was selenotropic
to fall in love with a gentle boobook
ever so finifugal when we speak

But I feel filipendulous when abendrot bows for advesperacit

You sometimes consider it sphalolaliah,
my words, going ever on and on,
But I’ll learn your lagom, if you give me time
akushla-A transliteration of an Irish phrase that means “my pulse”, a term of endearment.
solivigant-wandering alone
cynefin-a Welsh word meaning a place you feel you ought to live, where nature feels welcoming.
kalon-inner and outer beauty.
resfeber-the nervous feeling before a journey; a mixture of anxiety and excitement before travel.
brontide-the low rumbling sound of distant thunder
redamancy-love fully returned; opposite of unrequited.
trouvaille-something pleasant you find by chance.
dragoman-translator and guide, usually in Turkish or Persian countries.
yugen-an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep to be put into words.
susurrus-quiet whispering, or rustling.
atelphobia-the fear of not being good enough.
submontane-under or through mountains.
Balter-to dance recklessly; yet with enjoyment.
selcouth-unfamiliar, strange; yet marvelous
basorexia-the overwhelming urge to kiss
spoondrift-spray blown from waves during a gale at sea.
moonglades-the bright reflection of the moon’s light on water.
parallian-someone who lives by the ocean
werifesteria-to wander through the forest looking for mystery
selenotropism-growth in response to moonlight
boobook-a small, brown owl.
finifugal-someone who hates endings to stories, trips, or relationships.
filipendulous-hanging by a thread.
abendrot-the color of the sky when the sun is setting.
advesperacit-the approaching dark; the evening drawing near.
sphalolaliah-flirtatious talk that leads nowhere
lagom-just the right amount. Not too much; not to little.
WJ Thompson Jul 2017
Everything is simple;
simpler than you think.

Everything is just...
Layers.
Layers of simple things.
If you could figure it out, you would've figured it out hours ago when you first began to try and figure it out.
WJ Thompson May 2017
I'm underneath an amber twilight
(and tasteful landscaping)
flirting with nostalgic anticipation
in room 1034
yet alone and content
I should photograph my life events
or the morning dew, still wet
with evaporating trepidation
which breaks into a cold sweat
when soothed by the resolution
of the seventh, to the third, to the root of the polyphony, harmonizing to the tune
of a Scantron being scribbled on,
or my choice
to ignore
everyone
(at least until finals are over)
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
A pin ***** of an emotion,
Like the nomination of a leader.
Like a call to move forward,
Is this sensation's invite.

Follow the weave of these piano strings,
To find the stars in these longings that seem,
So eerily unattainable.

You know it as well as I.
The spark to light a flame,
And the scent to wake a memory.
A memory to invoke desire,
And desire to seek an end.

Follow the weave of these piano strings,
To find the stars in these longings that seem,
So eerily unattainable.

Mysteries hidden in these coves,
Crystal beaches all made of light,
Winter cold warmed by cabin stove,
Above caverns deep all made of night.

Follow the weave of these piano strings,
To find the stars in these longings that seem,
So eerily unattainable.
WJ Thompson Dec 2017
I'm young and in love
with disjointed sentences
mosaic symbols transforming
deliberations into expository
railroad tracks, crossing paths (with)
black jazz cats in the 20's to write the music a little differently for each note,
to ride a little Titanic eye contact
until Earhart makes it home.

Compress these highs and lows,
into melodic notes, dancing up (and down)
the Christmas tree, ornaments from
the time you were only three.
Days before we met, days beyond our starry-eyed goodbye,
Love is a gentle thing,
and you were such the words I'd pray to whisper in the night, on beaches made of all your favorite colors.
I want to be the way you see me,
I hope you never feel alone.
And what a treasure it was,
to speak with the princess,
instead of staring at the castle.
Soft cheeks instead of hard stone,
(cold glass, icy masks, distant hopes.)
But instead of distant,
You were close.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
Furious, I shook my fist at God
and said,
How could you allow this!

With an eyebrow raised,
God answered:
*I could ask you the same question.
I wonder how often I am the cause of my own problems.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
I could tell you about my acoustic guitar:
The phosphor bronze strings against the rosewood neck, or how my favorite chord sounds like stars and sleeping bodies.

I once wrote a love song
about mocha (and a girl)
But I forgot the lyrics
because I wasn't in love

An artist once accused me of giving up,
Of losing faith, of being lazy.
And he was a little bit right.
But music! Music is so easily produced,
quickly consumed, rarely reused.
How do you cash in talent
without melting into the
easily digested hooks
of Swift and Grande?
The hiiiiiiils are aliiiiiiiive with the sound of muuuuusiiiiic (faaaa la la laaaa).
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
You are,
               what you feel.
You are,
             what you think.

But you
             can
                    change how you feel by changing what you think-

I think.
Do you agree?
WJ Thompson May 2017
I haven't given up on love.
It's not that.
But...
there's something in the way the night hollows out the heart,
it's like being sculpted.
It holds less sway over my thoughts than it did when I was younger.
I wait for love.
Yes, yes that's it.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
There's an old abandoned bridge
between Yosemite and here.
Take the Lathrop exit where-
(or don't, it's your life after all)
-we throttled to jump off it
when our buddy flashed excitement, a boyish daydream, and we decided.

Our clothing
     soon was hanging
         on a long forgotten railroad track

(Sitting naked on a maple board-
            Probably from the Civil War.
Dropping rocks to test the height,
            Water black with no rapport)

         He giggled like a giddy child
     trying not
to give us flak,
(For being such a bunch of scaredy cats)

Moonbeams on our skin, and also iPhone torches, and the headlights of the Jeep.

And did he jump? yes!
From a stand with only his two feet supported by a 2 by 4?? yes!
He flipped behind his head!
A backflip with a midway twist.
(Or maybe I half-remember,
It was just a normal flip)

I swear, man, it was amazing.
Off the wooden railing,
Pale and falling towards the water,
                                                          ­ which,
(by the way)
was as black as the apocalypse.

Splashing ghostly underwater,
Then shimmied up the concrete pillar,
Called out to the crescent moon,
And gave a thirty foot salute,
       plunging towards the blackened river.

Laughing, swimming,
He called up to us, quivering,
(And said),
                "Alright, you're next."
One time my crazy friend suggested we jump off a bridge at night.
WJ Thompson Feb 2021
I am friends with the owls
and soon I will die and fade
into the midnight fog
floating among oak and redwood branches
haunting the hearts of the lonely
tugging at their heart strings
until they pour their love freely
like marriage wine.
I will haunt the hearts of the lonely
because I am one.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
She smiles like a Cheshire Cat,
And it makes me laugh to think of how she sways her hips, walking away while looking back, like a professional acrobat.

"Live with me! I'll cook for you!"

The cologne
      of her ex
             on her skin,
                  
as she coos
          into my ear,
                    "Oops,
                            
                              dropped my phone."

She bends her neck to let me see her *******
(which jiggle as she giggles at a joke I never said)

I don't trust her. Not at all.

But I'm flattered by her clear attempt to sell me in the mall.
Maybe it's Maybelline,
Maybe it's methamphetamine
(Or the bruises on her arm)
Or her pupils stretched with a line,
Of black paint past her felonies,
Past the "no trespassing" sign.
Past her oceanic iris,
Curving to her brow,
Like a coy, reserved, egyptian lynx,
Poised while on the prowl.
Maybe it's her melancholy glance,
Sent off towards some memory,
Of a redwood where she kissed-
How she looks away when she sits,
To my left,
her eyes, motioning
to some tempting offscreen thing...

I don't know what drug she worships,
But it's got her shivering.

"I love you like I love rock music
           (But keep your clothes on)
I love you like I love the Steinhart aquarium,
           (But keep your clothes on),
I love you like I love the cinema,
           (But thanks for the compliment)"
WJ Thompson Jan 2022
The night draws near
surrounding me with the obstinate strength of obsidian arms
casting over my head a blanket of oblivion
obliterating my obligation to be anything but oblivious.
My frame oblong along this bed frame,
I oblige the night her whispering request: to rest.
So be it.
WJ Thompson Oct 2017
Oh lies, oh lies,
I know them by their tone,
They have this... nervous tick,
a habit of leaving little vacuums
so they can live in their little
depressions, and anxieties,
which they are quite comfortable in.
They feed on joy
and keep turning the thermostat down to zero!

(Let's hunt them, and skin them,
and throw them out of the yard)

Oh truth, oh truth,
I know her by the manner in which
she speaks: gently.
a voice glistening with hope,
in every form of joy,
permeating every iota,
saying in that polyphonic
timbre, "You were made
for love and nothing else
will satisfy. Open your eyes,
see this love, and come alive."

(Let's marry her and make
our hearts a home for her)
Wisdom, oh Wisdom,
you wonderful woman of the day.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
Blue vessels, loving lights.
They all drifted away by the current that led them.
I watched them blink out off into the distance.
Hearts like a thousand spheres of color shining into a blackened night,
Piercing into it the dreams they carried.
Trailing behind them their intrepid wake.

The beautiful mystery of reckless dancing and ridiculous laughter.
Such is life, and such is my hope to see them again.

These are the delighted memories
that play games with each other
in my head and in my heart
bubbling with connection
these are the gifts
that keep me.
Gotta love your buds.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
The potential in the collections of seconds which crescendo into minutes in the clock of an outdated watch simmer furiously with their inability to communicate with their bearers and explain or at least signal that now would be exactly the perfect time to go and
                          just
                                do it.
Hats off to LaBeouf.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
There is peace in a path.
A narrow road, though it boasts of whistling cliffs,
those taunting lips, smashing the masts of adventurous ships.

It would be a lie,
if I said I haven't tried,
to reorganize,
my innermost parts out of adolescent formation,

Because thoughts I've entertained now reign throughout my mind,
like a dictator elected by popular vote,
like the deep which holds up the glacier that floats,
I find fear is a liar and she's never been kind.

Like staring at shadows until you see your worst enemy,
horror cinematic score, as the mirror gives you clarity.

Identity a scarcity in a dull, cold chamber,
looks like the real world but its upside-down,
Not quite right, black screen that shines against nature,
A deceptive light that you chase,
while you hide under sheets,
staring down the staircase,
it looks like you yet you know it's a stranger.

But these days,
heights don't scare me the way that they used to,
jumped off a bridge to prove to myself it wasn't true,
Feet placed firmly on the stones of solutions,
of callousing hands grasping rocky protrusions,
ascending the mountain which returns with repentance,
returning to walk in the light and see it through.

My hands hold the rope, but I didn't tie it
Heaven isn't distracted, she's extended her kindness.

I always got the order wrong,
I thought the affection of a woman would make me the man of my dreams,
but that comes first.
Love bore me, shaped me, and gave me my name,
so I'll live by it.

And that's the point,
there's peace in a path,
the acceptance of name,
to face those fears and say,
"You're wrong. I'm a son of faith"
Learning, or crafting, who you are.
WJ Thompson Feb 2018
There's petrichor in your coat
a moonglade for your gaze
I'll listen to psitherism
as I sense you pull away.
I found some cool nature words online and wanted to try something out
WJ Thompson May 2022
Rancor,
Swashbuckling with a sawtooth grin and sacrilegious shouts, selcouth with an unsound mind, the commonness of uniqueness, the commonness of opinionated onions cutting their teeth on life and crying, again, and ready to saw off the limbs of the opposition out of revenge!
Rancor, relax, you're not a Twitter matador, I wish you were because I’d love to watch the show.
We cuddle with exotic nylon fibers and squeal about our weight and status and how someone insulted us and how terrible it is to be alive while sipping on easily accessibly high fructose corn syrup! Life has never been this sweet, but I guess we’re getting sick of honey.
I complain about the complaints, I am the anti-complaining complaint club president.
I am a writer, an iPhone thumb tapper.
Hear me
These mental gymnastics will somersault and summerset you right, child,
Don’t listen to Rancor,
That man’ll grab your gaze and stir your attention into a cocktail while winking at you from behind the bar
he’ll leave your brain a little woozy from a life that used to be sweet until you left it out in the sun a few years too long,
I wonder if some of the dead watch us from the corners of our bedroom or the trees along the freeway, waiting for greatness to unfurl.
I’ll bet they do and I’ll bet you’re a glitch, I’ll bet a little piece of another galaxy hit you in the head and made your finger twitch.
How many hot car hours have been spent in a parking lot,
the skin dries, the phone dies,
the spirit once lifted towards the outlines of the mountain peak now seeks memes, transcendent in their own right.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
The question respirates
the acrylic aperture
behind the eardrum.
A responsive tongue to the palate
taps out the consonant.
But before the note descends
with musts in the glass-
The cathartic statue
refracts the
synapses stretching
continuums
to grant a
minuscule autocracy.
Already charting north,
fingers fluently gather
ego between the
sundered reverb of the vowel.
Already twisting key,
pressing restive feet
to acquiescent gasoline.
Working on my vocabulary.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
It was an atmosphere
It was an oxygen mixed with southern fog
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind
The rolling hills behind property lines

It was the question you asked
not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass
as I leaned against your Corolla
And we sang under the overpass

It was graffiti
It was graffiti
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple hair and acid wash jean jackets
melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement

It was the way the reverb spread the major seventh across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor ninth
which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars)
and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd-
surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.

It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat
soaking up the air of my A/C heat
and the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall
and now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all

But I'll let this night be interstellar
I'll take a bath in the Big Dipper and write you a letter about Orion's Belt
or how I miss the stars sparkling in your eyes making contact with the E.T. in me.

Phone me home, darling.
I'm lost at sea.

-W.J. Thompson
A repost but with a different ending.
WJ Thompson Jan 2021
Shhh
Don’t tell me how you feel
with crude, blunt words.
Tell me in myth.
Tell me in crashing planets,
                    swarming oceans,
                       sly words cast sideways,
                    heroes rising,
                 secret forests,
               evil lords,
           and wars.
Tell me in myth.
WJ Thompson May 2017
I spoke with testosterone,
and after he ripped apart
the concrete in my driveway,
he sank into a pile of rubble.
Lighting an ironic cigarette, he said,
"Teach me how not to care"
before he fell asleep.
He's been there for a while.
Maybe we should check on him?
10 AM I am pumped to workout
1 PM I workout
3 PM I am no longer pumped about anything.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
Words etched into the wall (above)
by the augmented fifth
Merely (below) displaced fifth
Blistering drywall
Voweling (in) out the love song
Caramelizing (out) paint
German Shepherd tilts
his (between) her head
Doesn't quite like (around)
The augmented fifth
What an awkward chord.
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
It is
beginning.
Mouse on the C
Mouse on the keys
Photovoltaic benjamins
New cologne: Mars Musk
X marks the interstellar profit
Build-a-baby with CRISPR-Cas9
Mouse jumping playing "Für Elise"
Are words worthy of the afternoon?
Does the value offer gain an interest?
Nicholas coils are being insistent.
Mouse waving, saying, "see!
Will you follow me?"
Scampers toward
ignited rockets
I'll follow him
into the
gold
rush
New job, baby. Let's gooooooooooooo
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
Ever onward into a sea of reverie
Where raindrops fall bronze by the light of the evening sky.
You and I were ghosts to the most colors we could find and that's fact.
We stopped at the green lights and flew at the red ones.
We drew a flood on the face of the desert
and danced to the sounds of the northern lights
those ever pulsating bass drums
that kept telling us it's time to wrap things up
because the end has come and new things are on the horizon.
Within all things are other things and all those things are galaxies.
A universe within a single cell amongst a million others
and they all make you.

So bless us this day our daily bed
and lead us not into nightmares
but deliver us from fear.
For thine is the brightness
The curiosity
And the adventure forever.
Amen.
I wrote this years ago. But I still love it. For love and adventure!!!
WJ Thompson Mar 2017
T.S. Elliot reminds me that I don't have to rhyme,
Every line,
                  or,
                      be on time, in measure,
Or attitude,
Or make sense,
Or only write when I'm depressed,
Or sad or angry.

Which is good,
Because I, (and I'm not being sarcastic),
honestly feel fine
T.S. Elliot=My favorite poet of all time
WJ Thompson Jun 2021
I want to surf the crashing waves of motion in your shoulder blades, glide along your neck until your ear’s the platform for the thoughts of sweetly singing heartstrings getting brought to harmony and pitch by the bouncing drop and lift of your laughter, so catch me with your banter, I’m a fool for you and you know it. Why hide it?
WJ Thompson Oct 2017
your. fresh. face.
is-an-excitement-to-my-eyes.
if/ our / purpose / for / this / bonding,
-is to hit a new high-
then-the-intention-of-our-souls
is. to. consume. until. we're. full.
(until comparison)
$to the memory$
[of the first time]
{that we rolled},
€makes another€
<seem old.>

How-then!
shall. we. proceed?
;
A\bond\that's\made\for\breaking
is[already]
de-cease­d.
(

— The End —