i like angry poetry
the kind that churns
in your gut,
with razors for teeth
and gums bleeding.
i like the violent sound
of verbs clashing
on a decaying page,
like the shot of a gun
on a quiet day.
i like the poetry that stays,
that lies in waiting
like a dog in a cage,
words that creep like
voided birds into the
wired tress of my brain,
that pay their rent
like drunken travelers
and trash the place.
i like angry poetry
the kind that sears it's
screams to my lips,
which spirit echoes and
moans for eager,
****** eyes.
words that hit like *****,
giving their reader
a killer hangover.
i like angry poetry,
the kind that leave you
with a smoky exit.

One day you are born. You don't know anything. You adapt and adjust to the world and learn more and more. Your parents are, more likely than not, ******. They don't exactly know why they gave birth to you, but they know they're supposed to love you now. Your childhood years are formidable and promising. You show talent in sports, music, and mathematics. You go to junior high and get pimples and a ****** drive. You kiss a girl at a Violent Femmes concert at the Del Mar race track when you're thirteen. She's kinda fat and slutty, but oh well. You try really hard to not be included in anything at your high school. You do a lot of drugs. Anything will do, xanax, *******, ****, ******, ecstasy, morphine, ******, beer, it's all the same to you. You get arrested for some dumb ****, your parents help you. You stop doing drugs. You get really into music again. You start a band. You start writing a lot. Your writing is cliche and dry at first. This discourages you. You can't stop for some reason though. After writing hundreds of pages of *******, you write a line that is utterly magnificent. You go to work at a job that barely pays you, you come home. You dream. The money goes round. Your aspirations swivel about in a drunken stupor behind your frontal lobe. You dream. You wake. You eat, ****, and sleep. The money goes round. You eat, you wish you had someone to ****, then you sleep again. You keep writing and playing music though. You get really, really good. But the lash goes on.

i'd sleep all day and constantly wake from nightmares
within nightmares
within nightmares
somehow couldn't recognise the reality,
lost in a blizzard of loud whispers
in a place filled with cold white coats and sick feelings
and worries painted on people's eyelids.

but now i hear your voice in the back of my eyes
i feel the words you say
i could say so many things
but my tongue is locked
my hands just shake
can't hold any letter
any vowel
the ashes of my words
are blown away from my lips

you're playing the strings of my brain
again and again
such a gentle touch,
a warm feeling that makes me forget
about the whispers and cold and worries.

i listened to your song in my sleep last night
and in a flash
the nightmare morphed into a dream
within a dream
within a dream

The journey
to real self-love
is not always easy
      There are so many elements
                          that can trip you up:
                            jagged rocks
                               that slightly jut out from
                              the silken, earthy surface
                            paths of black ice
                         that look clear          
    but slide you from your course
  their invisibility
only tangent
  after the fall
     light flash floods    
        that turn into monsoons
           at a moment's notice  
                                             a reflection of clear blue sky
                                                 that somehow turns
                                                    into a seemingly solid wall
                                                 But if we can hold on
                                             and somehow stay connected
         to the shining root within
       let it hold us in place like an  
      invisible anchor
         the floating umbilical cord
            that connects us
              to our inner mirror
                deep reflection
                  and resurrection
    Then we will know
     that every slip
    is truly temporary
   and only leads us to the
    improved firework
   of ourselves:
                              for nothing can stop us
No matter what
we will blossom into
the very electric flowers
we were meant to,
and, at our own
blessed pace,
     burst into
    the gentle ululation
   of
       the stars

"The pity of war, the pity war distills". - Wilfred Owen"

Just as a feral war begs for armistice,
    a season of peace engenders
a violence vacuum that begs to be filled
    as surely as a hollow begs for a pond.

It seems a cosmic battle rages
      between the oversouls of people
who would chisel a sculpture to grace
     and those who would hack off its arms.

History’s fools fire up their bully horns
     shouting proud oratory to ignorance -
and lemmings goose-step to the precipice -
      doomed to plunge into a sea of misery.  

Then there is quiet - guilty and reflective.
     How could we let this happen
with so much gain and loss in the balance?

and the sculptors of civilization
      find fresh marble to once again
carve reason, beauty, purpose
      from the acrid ashes of pride.
    
But the oversoul of hate will brood and re-fester
     as long as it's thought noble to **** for a cause.

© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard

the recycler man asked.
Did you learn about anything , say?  precious on
your way to the dump?
Did you see , perhaps, briefly, maybe
one thing, a glimpse of tin or aluminum
as you sped all along the Highway 57
or County road 439? ...that you may have thought appealing?
that to the more common man,
might have seemed like junk or garbage or
insignificant. Did you build another's confidence
perchance along the way? Or find his stash of cans?
Did you notice ? Did you notice?
Did you?  gold is right there,
in another's trash ,
How the meanings were so raw
and you passed right by,
rushing to die.Well, I can give you 1
cent on the pound for all the gold and silver
you accrued. For your bank account , though,
and insurance, I gave you a wife, and your children.
Eternity, was then and infinity , recycled
again and again.  
Go back to the end
of the line.

I shed everything but
the pencil skirt and stockings.
I suffocate and sundry and
drift into my boy's case of
suede leather, where he
trusts me to miscalculate
his competence and its
Saturday, the morning,
and he says, I love you
in the morning, Sarah.
There's stroke and nip,
at every turn of the trail
an adoration for what
he calls my soul, and
he asks for the routine
obliteration. A violence
always whispered.
I'm velvet everything.
Velvet tongued.
Velvet *****'d.
Each portal and contour
a soft place for him to
land, to dispose of his
fear of death,
but what am I supposed to
do with it, the fear of death?
But this is my burden
with the light skipping
through the blinds. Simpler
times, there were, I think.
And a last name he means
to hang on me, always soon
and very soon. Dishes in the sink.
Eternal moonbeams and sun rays.
This is it, I'm afraid.