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 Aug 2013 CR
Ugo
Sag my corpse
in 32 degree weather
through the city of God
where paraplegics dream of running.
“Oh Rhodesian mercenary,”
humble my soul again
like in C(hi)(ca)ongo.
But remember
The revolution starts
on my mama’s bed
at half past six.

So excuse me while I smoke my drink like a Brooklyn Leftist from the 40’s tramples
burning cigarettes on cold pavements where codeine and Sprite
make any Tuesday fabulous because we already suffered from (and for) the goods of mankind.
But before you read me the history of Hatchepsut;
I learned the art of man within the confines of FCC regulations after my ‘Pa threw ******* out the window and made life in the cell not mundane by telephoning philosophical-entendres    
that tomorrow never happened.

He too was from the blood of the ancestors whose bodies were charred on as goods
whose children now char their bodies with the goods of the goddess of Victory—
the official trademark for the lost Exodus—the blood and blue moribund—
sagging pyrrhic victories in 32 degree weather as homage to their charred ghost (fore)fathers
who preyed to the city of God for bread
 Aug 2013 CR
Ugo
In the burning right hand of the bald city,
denizens frame calories and count instagram blessings
while beacons of hope refund inspiration in USADA *** cups.

Abyssinian maids wail over yesterday lovers
who wore Ginsberg’s skirt with less  pizzazz
and watched bedbugs **** blood off knee caps
wondering, what if Jesus Christ drove a Nissan?

As bullets of paragraphs fall Vietnamese pesticides on my head,
The dusts off my breath sing homilies
With letters of broken leather whiskey,
For even in the most dishonest jest,
clandestine toothbrushes are overrated
and every first false lie is the only truth.
 Aug 2013 CR
TJ King
This morning I watched you
stumble into the bus
like a drunken moth:
straw-headed, foggy,
jacket clinging to you
by one shoulder
like an ironic flag.
America has claimed you!
Just like Our Moon,
those ironic flags of liberty.

Chortling, choking
on nothing but your
immovable child-like
sadness. Leathery
wings sprawled, gaping,
stinking of whiskey and ****.
You were screaming
at a woman across the aisle
whose eyes also gaped,
who didn't see the revolution,
who feared her reflection in the
eyes of "Made In The USA".

Who is she? What form
have you given her?
The mother who soaped
your tongue with her bitter morals?
The sister who boiled her
life away on a spoon?
The lover who embraced your wounds
despite EVERYTHING
and then became one?

You were eating an apple
from your pocket,
"Red Delicious,
the MOST American fruit!"
It was mostly rotten, sweaty
brown core staring into me
like a terrible moth's eye.

I watched you until
my stop,
I'm sorry I don't know why.
When the bus-man shoo'ed you off
I heard you scream after me,
really howling.

I'm sorry I can't save you,
I'm a moth too.

I ran home this morning
and left all the lights on.
 Aug 2013 CR
TJ King
Jan. 1st,

New Years drowns
its yesterdays with alcohol
and needle ships to
summer paradises made of ice

But in the morning,
when the frost retreats
into the suburban sidewalks-
slides its way down
into the drains-
mixes with the wastes and vomited
dredge-water of a year gone whipping by,

I see the children of the defeated
mothers poking ugly toads behind the shed
with cardboard hats fashioned
from discarded Budweiser boxes,
barefooted on dewy grass
with capes of an old bed-sheet
thrown out when daddy found mummy
in the arms of another woman~

I watch the fathers of men
smoking, sunken, and sitting
                                                    on the docks
of the world's beach-towns
wondering forlorn how they got there.
Their orange cigarette tips-
dying stars over the water.
The collective orange glow
both artificial and desperate
shines forever outward~
                                          toward the pole
where Johnny always kisses Sally
and they love each other
until they don't.

I stumble home at dawn
on the quietest day of the year with
the undergraduates:
Seekers of love
Seekers of purpose
Seekers of seeking,
Glassy eyed and slurring
Memorized facts about underground reservoirs
And the disappearance of the ******* honey bee,

Falling into ditches
And lying there with the sunrise in our eyes
Drinking and smoking anything
That will help us
forget we're watching the sunrise from a ditch

forget that if we're lucky
we too will be sitting on those docks,
flicking cigarette butts into the water,
and hoping Sally thinks about us sometimes.

Now-
the worried porch lights of Orange County
are turning off-
~And the mothers are curling their blonde hair
hoping someone will secretly fantasize about them
at work
~The fathers are covering up the smell
of cigarettes and alcohol with expensive cologne
and fantasizing about that blonde from work

~And the graduates have invested
in more comfortable ditches
 Aug 2013 CR
dana green
Three years ago four words crossed the threshold of my ear lobes and hypnotized me into a comatose state. only to be awaken by the sound of their sweet puncturing i rewinded these words with hungry haste
rewind rewind
play
these words swan through my canals
  relaxed as they finally found a home once more;
a home they might have already unpacked in,
                                                            p­erhaps in another life.

As they peeled their cloaks and unfolded into the folds of my lobes they sighed with content,
for my revelation was their new beginning
finally finding meaning once again in a universe where you cant live if you don’t have money,
  a sick sweet sour fabricated fact that penetrates the core of their solar plexis
                                leaving them unholy when the money structure takes over
                                holy when thought towers once again

With the ability of a person to move forward these words do no harm inflated with hope perfection honesty, embracing a utopia,
a now reality that you cant find on your starched TV.

Three years ago four words locked in a brassy compass whispered to me change the way you dream the way you perceive and what you do everyday and make sure you let your feet drag the mud behind you as you tow through the thick swamps of hate on the uprising paddleboat plays of justice.

Without her stark voice without The wandering jewess, Jesus-like Judith playing spells on my ears life would not have found a place where it holds comfort in the tempest.
These words like a shelter are my umbrella
but no ordinary umbrella covers here no,
no this umbrella knows when to open its arms to pour oms down my neck when drops are warm like skin on skin
and sunshine is bold like in black and white stills.

When wine is under trees these words will reflect in the crystalline stream I found in my inner cosmos when I was fourteen.

The people will have risen and Cain will have been banished and lovers will still lie limpid and hungry for the words of the storm eyed woman to ring like bells in towers above their heads again.

They are looking for paradise but they don’t know they are already in paradise, paradise now, paradise is now
They are searching for the words they have already heard they just don’t know what has occurred and sweat drips down their stems as they run in their minds to the revolution that has already freed us from the legacy of Cain.
Not for all,
But for us.
      A revolution of the mind.

These words will wake up sleepers and make the banks run after the money no one cares about.
These words are almost too holy for me to say out loud in only one voice they play and in one voice they say,
“TO DO USEFUL WORK”
Those words sing like they are of the angels like they have wings
Those words take their homes not only in my folds by in the white blood cell donuts of my fingertips, defending me from the ****** that say art cannot be my food.

The wandering jewess, Jesus-like Judith carved those words out of freshwater pears for me to drape around my neck like the arms of an infant crossed over the nursing chest.
My fingers wrap around those words like they are the scripture they are the word of my god cleansed by the salt water winds of wooden ships rummaging for rapture and something more than themselves.


Sometimes, wanderers find a home when alphabet fingerprints find a match to their long lost story

And sometimes, the UV rays hit your lens just right so that you can pass through a prism and come out a rainbow

And sometimes, gumballs come out the color you want,

the one that you patiently cranked for.
 Aug 2013 CR
Amber S
it has been two and a half months
(really it’s been seven years, three months,
fifteen days, twelve hours, five minutes and thirty-three
seconds)

but my jacket is back.
(except it smells like you)

acoustic guitar, the redolence of ****
and mistakes pungent in the sort of summer air.

but my jacket is back.
(except it tastes like you)

i felt your footsteps, imagined the way your fingers
held my hair, tight, yanking. a doll with loose threads.

but my jacket is back.
(except it looks like you)

your teeth reminded me of the oceans i could never find,
your eyelashes like razors begging to slice me open.

but my jacket is back.
(except it feels like you)

it felt heavy in my bruised hands, your hug
was a boa constrictor killing prey. main course.(dessert)

but my jacket is back.
yet when i wear it,
all i can think is you mounting, hands
rigid, your fingers venom.

i cannot breathe with it on
 Aug 2013 CR
brooke
My worst fear to
be traded for fair
for pixie hair, for
long bony fingers
and an affinity for
paint being smeared
on jeans. I am

none

of
those
things.
(c) Brooke Otto

Let my brain get the best of me.
 Aug 2013 CR
kylie
jack and jill
 Aug 2013 CR
kylie
they were smoking cigarettes
on top of their old man's hill
at four o'clock in the morning,
and it was almost uncanny how
the sky was just like the two of
them

it was dark and it was quiet and
it was mysterious, and so were they,
but the sky couldn't talk and it couldn't
feel and sometimes she wished that she
couldn't either

"i love you,"
she told him

"your problem,"
he replied
016
 Aug 2013 CR
Elizabeth Squires
it is
an impossibility
to have a foot
in two camps
for those who choose
to have divided loyalties
there is
no bridging ramp
either they are friend or foe
they cannot have
a toe
in both boroughs
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