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C S Cizek Dec 2014
Keep-A-Breast
                                 Apple
             OtterBox
                                                    Acu-Rite
    Dial                                                                Aquafresh
                        Oral-B
        ACT                                Garnier                                           Equate
    Hanes
On the Byas  
                            Rude
                                                        Toms
                                Dakine
                                                                 Acu-Vue  
Ponds                                                                                         Degree
  Preferred Stock    
                                    Mighty Wallet
                                              Hot Topic
                     Keurig                                        Dixie
                                                                                               Donut Shop
Domino

International Delight

                                 Peter Paul's
Best Yet                                                            Great Value

                                        Instagram
Facebook
        Snapchat                                           Yik Yak
                                                                              Forever 21

                Adventure Time
FSC                                     Bic                 The Poetry Foundation
             Staedtler                               Pilot                Sharpie            Microsoft
The Norton Anthology
  

                                                         Toshiba            Dell          Expo
Lipton  
Emerica
Anti Hero                                MOB                   Shorty's

               Bones               Thunder  
                                                                                        Shake Junt
                                                                                       Swingline
                                                                                      Pandora
Tommy Hilfiger

'                            Jill                Greg                 Ashley          Courtney

Judy
Bob
Janice                    
Shannon                                                                                   Kelly

Robert                                 Emily                  Jeremy      Darrin      Liza

Bill                Joe                         Dominic            Sean              James

Gav                             Jordan                   Tony              Eric


Christopher
A list of things I use everyday, including people I take for granted.
C S Cizek Dec 2014
I hope you'll find me
          sitting on the edge
                  of a dash where
                                   the line
breaks.
I've been working on an essay for the past five, almost six, hours.
C S Cizek Dec 2014
8:55 A.M.
Wednesday,
December 3, 2014

Eyes dry, stagnant like a box fan
in a windowless room in summer.
Del Monte plastic blades—black
on the serrated side—dice rotting
pizza tomato trash air.

Stomach like a battery acid pond.
Flannel, Dockers, hair slicked
tight like road signs, tossing oyster
crackers to acid ducks. The sky's
on fire.

Clouds textured like *******
and never-ending like Escher.

Jet planes carry ***** comatose
patients into the sun to burn
out like a light bulb
a few flickers of life gone.

Hands dry, faulted like missing
bathroom tiles at Exxon-Mobil/
Sunoco/Shell beneath the metal
sink where crabgrass sprouts
from the cracks like

cheap caulk from Second-Hand Hardware.
Bent nails, rusted patching trowels,
ants in the quick-dry drywall mix.

I'll never reach Nirvana.
C S Cizek Nov 2014
I suckled my mother's Bluetooth breast
while my father built me a bassinet
of series circuits with high, motherboard
bars.
I've got that artificial baby glow.
But Mom put my ****** on Facebook
at four weeks and I still haven't re-friended
(forgiven) her. My upgrade's in nine months,
but I want my downgrade now
'cause all I get are social invite excuses
from Facebook fuckfaces. We pack
our lives into little boxes that we're
not even allowed to open.
We drink to technology, keep our lazy
eyes on our news feeds, and recycle
ideas like their owners would even
want to see what we've done to them.
We misquote Confucius and credit ourselves
with mangled Robert Frost stanzas.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I think
it's awesome that Pepsi used to be blue."

Reblog, revine,
retweet, FaceTime.
Folding chair fold-out on someone's lawn.
White-out Yeats, Keats, Byron, and Auden,
and write John ******* or Tom Whatever.
We're caught in the chicken wire of an LCD
fruit basket so neat, orderly, and brushed
aluminum. How can people write in Starbucks?
S
   B  
       U  
            X
B  
     S
The cooler's too ******, music's too shy,
and the sugar, no, not just the sugar.
THE PEOPLE are too artificial.
The carpet-suit inlay I'm standing
on has pencil lead, sock lint,
and receipt shred lapel pins.
Even corporations play dress-up.

But what happens when Y2K kicks
in tomorrow?
Lives will be lost even before
the missiles **** us.
And the planes that drop
from the sky won't even come close
to when the bough breaks your little
girl's heart, baby, because your phone
can't raise her anymore, so you have to.

And based on your search history,
tweets, and recorded dreams,
she's better off in the warm
embrace of a hard drive.
The poem for my Color & Design final.
C S Cizek Nov 2014
So down, I'm drinking coffee grounds
to stay up. Pieces of bark in my

cup like a tired dog running on half-
woofs. Half & Half fizzles, sizzles

West Coast Folgers corporate doorstep.
Step lightly / hardwood floorboards.

Each creak, each door hinge "hello" couldn't
make me go. Fetch me the paper, some

poetry, a pen and a pad to write on.
To feel right on.

Lines so loose that delicates / zip-ups /
camisoles lie on the hillside

trying to poke the clouds, pop 'em,
with their tags. 100% cottonpoly-

estersilkrayon blend. Pure blend,
breakfast blend. The mug I stole

from the caf 'cause they steal from
me. Thousands of dollars every semester

for Cheerios everyday. Cholesterol doesn't
matter to me. Not because I don't care,

but because I've lowered the good kind, too.
So low, so low, the parking garage elevator

girls can't pick me up. So low on morale,
my textbook battalion would rather shut

me out.
So low that I'd let them.
C S Cizek Nov 2014
No, not for Fifth Avenue or the suits
giving the homeless more **** than change.
This one's for Buffalo, the city above
and below the city.

Where we watched fireworks pop low
behind a Chinese restaurant's mustard frame
on the hood of my car contemplating
Wolfgang. Where, 20.3 miles away,
I saw two men holding hands, and I felt
whole. Where we could find a sit-down
dinner / no candles, but not everywhere
can be paradise / at 9:30. Where we tried
to make love in a bed too big for two
small people in this big, big world.
We're stray cats playing with locked
keys left in the ignition and a wire
hanger snake slithering through
the window seal. High moon,
we held hands, receipts, and ice cream
cones at Anderson's Crocs-behind-
the-counter-custard-and-roast-beef-
stand. We kept a gallon of lemon tea
in an ice pail as our centerpiece / king
suite. The Holiday Inn pool tasted
like ****, and boiled my contacts
like a fried egg.

But that's all gone now.
The fireworks, the dinner,
the sexless bed, the eggs.
All buried in Buffalo.
C S Cizek Nov 2014
Haircut stairwell.
Linoleum floor, walls, door,
dog, clippers. Hair like smoke.
Temporary carpet.
Peppermint/cinnamon disk
medley by the hemp shampoo.
Eleven dollars.
Buzzteethscrewnostrils
and a cordedtail kiss my neck,
leaving behind plasma lipstick.
Six dollars.
Fish-scale table.
Rip a twenty, place face-down,
so Andy won't have to watch
you go.
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