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 Apr 2013
Charles Bukowski
from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.

one flies
off.
then
another.

one is left,
then
it too
is gone.

my typewriter is
tombstone
still.

and I am
reduced to bird
watching.

just thought I'd
let you
know,
******.
 Apr 2013
Charles Bukowski
the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them
 Apr 2013
Anonymous thanks
Remember to breathe.
It’s simple – it is.
It should not be so hard but my lungs would have me suffocate
If my willpower were not so sturdy,
Intractable,
Or merely selfish.

I can’t quite decide how I feel as of yet,
But everything’s changing and my willpower's spent.


I hate being wrong, and despise saying please.
I think begging is weak, but I’m here on my knees.
“I am stubborn, conceited, I don’t need to have friends.”
I tell myself daily that these are my assets.
See, if I’m a freak, well at least I’m the best,
And no advantage can come from a pain in my chest.
Yet it might just be worth it, though it doesn't make sense,
If instead day to day I can look at your face.


I've never admitted defeat before,
I won’t say it aloud, but this is new and I’m lost,
I’m vulnerable, scared – I’m doubtful, unsure.
Emotions are foreign, not of my attributes –
I don’t want them to be. I don’t want to fall into
The same traps that those who are ordinary do,
But I suppose that there are exceptions to rules.


This in no way should work - it’s dysfunctional, wrong.
I’m unstable as ever, but almost feel I belong.
We are both faulted in our own different ways
And we feed off each other, more madness and chaos, more driving of rage.
Yet dichotomy dictates that there's something in this,
something so perfect which can contradict
all of the pettiness, all the insane,
for I've never felt more alive in my pain.

It’s as if you’re the puzzle piece I didn't know I was missing,
The part that completes me and fills me right up,
With a feeling I knew not could ever end up
Affecting or noticing someone like me,
At the midst of it all I just hope that you’d be
In the same situation if I told you my thoughts:
As confused as I am – but could still take the lead – in short:
Stay here, don’t go, I don’t want you to leave.
Now I stand, close my eyes, remember to breathe.
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
The doctors told me I should abort.
But my mom convinced me this was for the best  

I told them I wanted a closed adoption.
They said that I'd never see you again.
I was okay with that.
It made things easier.

You have to know,
I never wanted any of this,
I never thought I'd be one to abandon my only child
That's monstrous.
Please believe me,
I am not a monster.

But he was.

Your eyes are the same.
Dark and hard...
but sort of empty too.

Your smile
is soft and gentle - like his.
A practiced liar's smile.

Your hands,
they look just like the ones he wrapped around my mouth and neck,
long and thin, but surprisingly strong.

Your voice -
Identical to the one that whispered
"no one will believe you"
into my ear that night.

You even kind of smell like him.

I don't know what you expected to get out of this:
Money?
An apology?
Closure?
Love?
I can't give you any of those things.

I will tell you this:
I could have spared you this moment,
And not doing so, is my biggest regret.
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
It was found today
An old leather-bound journal
All its pages – blank
Copyright © 2012 J.M. Romig. All rights reserved.
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
It was found today
The body of a woman
Killed softly by life.
Copyright © 2010 J.M. Romig. All rights reserved.
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
It was found today
A leaf, crumbling the sun
Scattered by the wind.
Copyright © 2011 J.M. Romig. All rights reserved.
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
Once a **** is given, one can not get it back.

I heard somewhere recently
that people are the most creative
at the times they think
that they are utterly useless:
like in the morning before getting coffee
or while surrounded by ******* co-workers who won't shut up about their stupid gun collection
       (cause seriously, no one cares about how big your **** isn't, Phil.)

The amount of ***** anyone can give in a day varies based of many factors - the amount of sleep someone has the night before or if they ate breakfast that morning, for example, can determine how many ***** a person has to spare.

It is in that spirit - despite my better judgement -
I am writing to you at four AM.
Sitting in my underwear,
Forcing my eyes to stay open, licking my dust-dry lips.
and realizing that I forgot to brush my teeth -
I'm writing that tid-bit that down
in hopes it will embarrass me into making a proper oral hygiene choice
sometime in between when I finish writing this and before I pass out from exhaustion.

If someone deems a person or a situation not worth their emotional effort, they can choose to not give a ****, despite having ***** they can give.

Today at work:
Everyone kept asking me if I was alright
I told them that I think so -
because, that's the truth.
But also because it's easier to say than
"I don't want to be here, and your face annoys me"

A **** is approximately two damns. A **** is two *****, and a **** is two rat's *****.

I don't have much to say in this piece
So I'm hoping that self-deprecation
and artsy-fartsy stream of consciousness
still passes for decent poetry these days.

Taking a **** is morally objectionable.
Copyright © 2013 J.M. Romig. All rights reserved.

NaPoWriMo 2013 - Day 1
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
I don't know if you remember me
I was on the jury two weeks ago
When you were being tried.

Our eyes met for a moment
As your lawyer went on and on about
Crimes of Passion.
You smiled at me.
and bit your lower lip,
all ****-like - like those women in the movies.
I smiled back.

I can't get you out of my head.
All I keep thinking is -
do you have to be married to get conjugal visits?
NaPoWriMo
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
Autopoiesis.
Autocorrect: Autopsies?
Such a pessimist.
NaPoWriMo
 Apr 2013
JM Romig
"I saw you eyeing this"
       I wasn't.
"It's my writing journal. I'm a poet, In case you were wondering"
       I wasn't.
"I don't know if I'm any good. I mean, people say I am"
       Probably not.
Finally, I handed him the question he was fishing for:
       "So what do you write?"
"Oh, well, I did recently complete a poem
 comparing life to a game of chess"
        He had the smuggest most punchable face ever.

                      ...seriously?
You and every other 8th grader who got that prompt in Language Arts.
                        *******.

                                           Is what I should have said to him.

I don't know why he ****** me off so much
Maybe because he reminded me of a younger version of myself
       Always pushing my writing in people's faces
       demanding they have an opinion on it.
Hell, I still do that from time to time.
       Who was I to judge this poor guy?
                 but I did.

After a few years, I forgot about him entirely.
I couldn't recall his face even at gunpoint,
and all that is left in my memory of him
       is that stupid comment about life and chess...
                                         Chess takes strategy, and skill.

If you're gonna compare life to a board game,
It's more like chutes and ladders,
         pure chance
Like Battleship,
         dumb luck
Like Solitaire,
         all too often you're playing with yourself.
But when you aren't it's Charades,
         you're always trying to guess
         What the other really means
         and it's always simpler than we're making it.
It's Clue
         In that no one has all the pieces to the puzzles
         But if we work together,
         maybe we can solve the mysteries.
Scrabble
         It's a bag of incoherent consonants and vowels
        Having no inherent purpose,
        Developing all meaning through your design.

And yes, a little like Chess,
          In that I never learned how to play it.
NaPoWriMo
 Apr 2013
Richard Jones
My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.

— The End —