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1.3k · Apr 2017
Busyness
Derek DM Apr 2017
When did we call become so

Infuriated by the rain
and the sunshine

Impatient to run
and wait in line

Insecure of space
and empty time

In days where the end
was made by the farmer's hand
pinching the flame out

There were only rows
the sun and rain made
over a season grow
1.1k · May 2017
The Great Spirit
Derek DM May 2017
Every atom here
is connected to yours
there.

If we'd only listen
Not with ears
Or see with eyes

Not with brains
or Skin
Only within

You are not there
and I not here
We are one

In a blazing sun
Of colliding
and confiding

It's your being
and mine
Intertwined
966 · Apr 2017
Valhalla
Derek DM Apr 2017
When you think the battle's ever won
By hundred spear, sword, or gun
In slashing, pillaged mortal right
Come together, for now we fight
Think not upon your mortal dread
Will fail you even when you're dead
The battle will for ever clatter on
Praised in joyous kinds of song
By gruesome men in drunken seige
The fight for the end is your liege
Not your pitiless sacred stone
Or the loved one left back home
But to fall upon the largest stage
The coming of the end of days
Honor and sacrifice is what will tell
The lasting sequence, the final bell
So stop ye now your idle chatter
Sharpen that what really matters
Try to remember what was done
The Sword, the Spear, or Gun.
The fight never ends.
736 · Feb 2017
Tripped
Derek DM Feb 2017
In a moment of glaring dead ecstasy
The foothold edge wedged down
The world spun into oblivion
Awakened into creamy havoc
On graveled hands and knees
Bludgeoned crevasses
In a dusty cowl of contempt
Toes betray ****** bow
A rocky curtsy of know how
Shake and stand in disdain
Our own dignity stained
Blech!
Derek DM May 2017
For days we liased
Along lines and trains
Til we came upon a town
Wet with rice paddies
Steeped in Uji

This area is famous
He said
For centuries we make tea.
I nodded and drank.

To the sea
We marched slowly
Along busy roads
Crashing waves
to a small family shack

This area is famous
He said
Teriyaki and Eel
Eating a delicacy of spine

Into the mountains
Fuji welcomed us
To orchards
And High spirits
In the snowy dome

This area is famous
He said
The fruit basket
Drown in sweet wine

So we fly
To electric billboards
and modern architecture
The pride of industry
In hazy skyline

Hiroshima is very famous
He Said
Really, Why is Hiroshima famous?
For Atomic Bomb!
665 · Apr 2017
Thin Raised Line
Derek DM Apr 2017
While plucking, prodding, pulling
Defacing the nature
Of our own wildernesses
624 · Apr 2017
Untitled
Derek DM Apr 2017
It is a tiny little box
To write a poem in.
Like a frame before
The painter begins.
But such as it is.
I am but the guest.
What can I care
But hope for best.
In starched white
Blessed chair
I sit the *** of my
words down here.
I am usually pretty good with change... when they are positive. I guess most people must write their trash on their phones.
595 · Apr 2017
L-O-V-E H-A-T-E
Derek DM Apr 2017
Laced betwixt each knuckle
Of hardened, crafted hand
Villainy laid buckled
Etched in ink and sand

Hostile thoughts, now yearning
Against each ***** so new
Till each hand left burning
Everything left was you.
547 · Apr 2017
You Are Now Connected
Derek DM Apr 2017
O'er lakes and ponds, skyscrapers too
With lashes, hooks or skyward beam
Furious synapses sparked and they grew
Systems of masters and slaves team
To recreate what the earth already knew
As told by the heavens and the seam

As cool rivers flow and airy winds blow
The lights and the sounds reverberate here
Calling to us in broad spectacular show
Til it is no longer the darkness we fear
Blades of leaves and the grass bellow
But what they say is no longer clear

On, forth, the improv of our sale
We trudge onward with no regrets.
Now each connected by our grail
Lost, except within hearts of poets
The stars still shine and tell their tale
Obscured by the lights of our sets
Prompt: Write about the internet
463 · May 2015
Writing
Derek DM May 2015
All of your sincerity can nay make me believe
There is an egg hatched within these words
A broken ***** unspilled with lusting
Doesn't a new father and a mother bring
We just carry on with odd shuddering
The benevolent shot of blind oxytocin
Rings the bells of this sweet typing
Until the critic sets in.
459 · Apr 2017
Why We Write
Derek DM Apr 2017
There is a never ending toll
Down, in the deep pit of our soul
In a constant, trembled churning
A house-fire e'er brightly burning
While we, trapped scramble inside
As the smoke and heat, they rise
We stand to face the black smoke
Move forth, stumble, cough, and choke
Eyes squint in blearied raging reds
Yet we must shuffle on ahead
With our loved ones right by our side
Together press to find the rise
Where the air and heat are clear
To Stop and move beyond our fear
Finally, fresh breaths fill our sides
Til we find, someone was left inside.
449 · Jan 2017
This Line is Disconnected
Derek DM Jan 2017
The whizzing work on wondrous display
Buzzing and flashing throughout the day
A shocking harmony with dire attention
In tribute to word or sad photo mention
Bring upon us the fizzling sharp memory
Three years ago august scratched in emery
Shuttled by in a long dazing shot of light
Longing to see what is no longer in sight
Instead a meandering, grazing installment
Mocking this week's newest involvement
From highest perch, a moralizing parlance
No question or thought to odd circumstance
Just spill the word behind digitizing partition
And don't go on with even another mention
Here is what's today, vaporizing tomorrow
Another page atop the pile of deluded sorrow
445 · Jan 2017
The Last Dive
Derek DM Jan 2017
A hard, stifled breath stumbled in
Like those cool summer mornings at the lake
When we'd cannonball into the water
The impact too shocking to the system
To let out a cry or even a whimper
But just to breathe was heaven
So alive in the gold of the sunrise
Cheered on by whistling birds and crickets

Yet now we stand here still as a ghost
Between linoleum and florescence
The impact too shocking to the system
To let out a cry or even a whimper
To hear aloud what we've always known
The cold water of our own lakes
Rippled by toes and flailing arms
In careening leaps from our own dock

Did we ever really choose to fly
Into the green mountain waters there?
We were together then, in a blanket of youth
Within the loosely written
loves of our days and imaginations
Pressing the simple edges of lakes and peaks
With ragged hair and ***** fingernails
We moved on, and on together we went

But now, in scorned breath we go.
Covered in our solitude and dark clouds
Too sheltered and alone
To let out a cry or even a whimper
Our aspirations silenced by just one
Too many falls into places unknown
Not feeling, not seeing
How we were really living.
There's more to write on this one.
379 · Jan 2017
Mick
Derek DM Jan 2017
You do not have to be good
Be gratefully abhorent
A jubilant banjo of colors
Bleeding together into song
With crackled verse sung
Proud melodies whipped
Choruses bent forward
Into screaming chasms of hope
Until the voice is its own
Kind of weeping reality
Where the energies lie within
The centers of us all
378 · Nov 2017
Today's Note
Derek DM Nov 2017
A green angry
bottle of ****
Nasty ogre of
endless remiss
In oozing
incountenance
Hammers in
breathy credence
Defy we they
Her that say so
And he that
cowers in every show
In so much greater
they number
The mess of my
horrid old lumber
Most definitely
Me
It's all that they
See

Despite from
this efforts
Being nice and
Laid comforts
An exhaustive
dumb repetoire
Of convulsive
nice quagmire
It is never enough
Just an affliction
of being
Damaging
Careening
A car on the ice
Another monsterous
device
In each day fro
And so it must end
There's no way to stop
never to mend.
My poetry has really gone to ****. It doesn't even matter.
378 · Dec 2016
Gaps
Derek DM Dec 2016
You do not have to be good.
The spaces in your lines are there
like the gaps in notes
Rests of benevolent space
Vibrations mended by air
Blown by the wind
Until it lands upon your lips
Parted so perfectly
the strings of relevance
breathed out and in
Across my ears
Into my center.
373 · Jan 2017
Parsimony Mine
Derek DM Jan 2017
You do not have to be good.
All of your poems about hurt
Your lines of love and loss
Need to flow out of your core
Trapped they fester like maggots
Feeding on the root of your mind
Press it out and quickly
Into lines of code
Brush strokes of sanitation
Let it flow from you like sewage
Flushed from your center
Then realize that this waste
Wanes your foolishness
Cloaked in your innocence
Not less, but more knowing
A mine of parsimony
That needs to be cleared
So that the true depths of love blossom.
372 · Jan 2017
Awake
Derek DM Jan 2017
You do not have to be good
If you hear the whispers
Faint in the hallways
of your own heart
You have already heard
that there is no good
Only that which your
lips ache for
In pangs bowels deep
Where flesh raises at
the thought of ends
where poorest judgement
Lies awake with torment
It is the very breath of our disaster.
372 · May 2017
Nisi Dominus - Cum Dederit
Derek DM May 2017
No little script
That I have wrought
Could be so perfect
So tightly fraught
With such tones
and Temperament
With your bones
And subtle inference
Yet there you hum
Whilst I write
To catch a crumb
Of your in-finite
Sing a hallow
Gold, cold refrain
So I may swallow
And remain in-sane
For the aria, my dear
Splays my soul
And such, I fear
Might that, be all
Il Supremo, Vivaldi
370 · May 2017
Enthusiasm
Derek DM May 2017
Show me yours
The Energy
Behind your ideas
Your love of what is
With that sprightly mind
Boost our hopes
Of importance
In something that isn't
Create it within
Your cells
Show me yours
How we can be
More
Than what is without
The mark of your
Enthusiasms
Fake it til you make it.
362 · May 2015
Blow Them Down
Derek DM May 2015
Don't eat the ****
oH, HERE it comes
the magenta blow
of all you know
self-righteous *****
must scratch that itch
to tell us what's so
and how it must go
all that I said
in words that were wed
upon brows of hot sweat
ain't seen nothin' yet
354 · Jul 2017
Untitled
Derek DM Jul 2017
Bless me here now
On my knees I shrink
To their benevolence
In the shadow of shrines
Where soundly sleeps
the Hypocrisy of time
The sage loss of knowing
That nothing is new
Under the sun

So speak to me
In your new tones
and tell me the story
that Changed it all
For you and for me
So that we care
Or wouldn't you dare?
Bring me so forth
To the altar of time

Where I have cheated
and stole, and pressed on
This flesh for love
Of my own time
In the mornings of light
You and I will see
Where the bodies they lay
And where they go on.
353 · Jul 2017
Romance
Derek DM Jul 2017
In sweeter hushed tones
across your own lovelied zones
We walked along in Fields
Where tall lavender shields
Our toes from the sun
Into soft dirt that we've spun
Where you lifted your skirt
As we crossed this fair earth
Into a meadow of grass
Where one word would sound crass
Against the buzz of your bees
The shuffling of our knees
Through this spring thicket
We tread on further in it
Unto your laughter we fall
Into a deer-bedded wall
Where the sun catches so
Forever here I will go.
Derek DM Apr 2017
It's really a ruse
Not to confuse
The body with
the Mind.
In cold, disparate spaces
In careless, drab faces
Pushing us
to lose that behind
But really it's knocking
what's under that stocking
hat that you wear
all the time
You know who you're fooling
When this drive starts cooling
You can't push this body
without changing your mind.
341 · Jan 2017
You Do Not Have to Be Good
Derek DM Jan 2017
Don't forego the innocence of creation
We weep the same salty tears as our mother's
The same clearing air fills our lungs with song
The bristled brush strokes and black pencil marks
Have seen the same hallowed curve through time
Let us fall into our place on the arc of our story
We forget our truths in each mornings rise
Rejecting the lines that just yesterday we drew
Until each day it is written anew.  By you.
Or else rejected as trite, an artifact of life
Rejected by years and years of tribalism
There can be nothing new under the sun
So scratch and awl the patterns and patches
Or remember the innocence, the open patch
Between the trees where sun breathes life
Into your skin and eyes and mouth.
Where breezes set the color of your mind
and Your tune buzzes beneath the countenance of your love.
336 · Feb 2017
Nothing at All
Derek DM Feb 2017
Nisi Dominus Frustra
Scant legible tantra
Muscled marbled muse
Adorned, confused
Standing in Massivity
Before us, behind us.
319 · Jan 2017
Figure Drawing
Derek DM Jan 2017
the fat **** there lay
On the wall
splayed between thighs open
Without expression
Except as art
The beauty of figure
Nature's whorish expression
comes to life in this ****
In pencil, or is it pen?
Shocked ***** nether
pressed into 80 pound bond
Look, look away
Move on, but look back
watch her lips purse
irises flicker and throats clear
Fountains of youth
never produced such blush
In the markings of young women
where bared ***** roam
in Quieted approvals
And not this shaft of derision
Where ******* have put down
and no one blinks an eye
So raised are now the *****
and let's see where the room turns.
318 · Jun 2017
Control
Derek DM Jun 2017
The lash
It cuts
With each blink of your eye
The swat
Dismissed?
A welt in your thigh
The pull
Your hair
Drawing us back in
The whip
Caressed
Beach blanket skin
Come back
For each word
We never have to say
Just mind
It matters
The reasons we stay
318 · Feb 2017
A Moment
Derek DM Feb 2017
Please come
Let me press my prints through your hair
A silky moving picture of auburn oceans
Whose flowing waves roll into my hands
And out again like the tides of your love
Here with me in a moving moment of wonder
Captured in the lenses of my being
314 · Mar 2017
States of Being
Derek DM Mar 2017
I sat in my morning chair
The newspaper in my hands
As my fingers creased the print
I saw no words or story
But instead wondered
What will become of us?
311 · May 2017
I lie
Derek DM May 2017
On my belly
I conspire
To Live
A life of crime

Glory above
There is no
Such thing as
No Values

All fortunes
and deeds
become dusty
clouds

On the horizon
There is only
A legacy
of old jokes

Passed down
through births
and marriages
across towns

Held up
by gunpoints
and finger
points

Pinned down
by church
potlucks
and Casseroles

Propped up
by war stories
and movies
About heroes

Brought down
by their own
Glories
In the dust
299 · Mar 2017
We Can Be Different
Derek DM Mar 2017
I can see through
The way you put it
In drab olive tones
Like sketches of people
Drawn in invisible ink
Where the page is the only color
And the lines are a haze
of forgotten notions
and history

Today lets make a line
Perhaps only in pencil
H8 with light strokes
And erasable mistakes
An outline of your heart
On rosy-rolled papers
Create soft perspectives
until the day
We draw in ink.
298 · Feb 2017
Fluency
Derek DM Feb 2017
Garbled sounds in buried tones
Please me in there harried tips
Paid in hustled barriement
Til the day spills on out
Send me there with wishes
Haunted by millennial ghosts
Paved by the bones and harps
Slung into my ears to wave
Pull me here today
Into the now we rage forth
With touches of knowing
And glances of hopeful verberation
Care me to ope’d mouth
In breathy I love yous
Originally written in 2013(?)
293 · May 2017
Just Wander
Derek DM May 2017
Just to be
Beneath a sea
Of ice and whiskey

Atop a bar
Somewhere far
Madagascar

Or, Miami Beach
Within arm reach
Or to beseech

My new friend
To go round the bend
To find the token

See the sight
Spend the night.
Get in a fight

All on a plane
Hills in the rain
The palm of some Jane

F'ever roam
Never home
Only a Stone

A black mark
Forever Dark
On my life's chart.
289 · Jan 2017
Begin Again
Derek DM Jan 2017
Today is the day that I start again
A rolling field of daisy and clover
Roll anew, unfurling the old yarns
Off my sore tired, freckl-ey arms
Into the ****, cold awakenings
Goose-pimpled, downy spread wings
Across the sheer of matted pillows
Our poetry once soft, now bellows
Till we glean on the asunder cries
Sliding forth into harmonious sighs
Finally alone, in gloried soft glows
Our worst matter openly shows
Thus Forgiven and forgotten now
****** forward again we avow
To keep our songs open and whole
For moments never wasted, but stole
277 · May 2017
Make It Stop
Derek DM May 2017
A constant buzz
Lies, just because
There isn't a truth
In being uncouth
It is just how I am
A feeling of ******
Even if I did
Still just a kid
In the gooey middle
Of every day's riddle
To stand up and be
Or finally flee
266 · Jan 2017
Torture
Derek DM Jan 2017
It's a flicker of teeth
in most lovely of sheath
The blonde down of a cheek

A spare glimpse, a bare thigh
The fluttering lashes of a sigh
Left with nothing so sweet

Such instinctual arrival
Nay, my key to survival
Under this heft I am meek

Pray, now leave it alone
Yet, come now a dog to its bone
Our soul's unbeatable treat

So unto here I now lay
With this flesh I shall pray
To the God I still seek
265 · Apr 2017
Why
Derek DM Apr 2017
Why
It's not about me
They are busy

Making ends meet
Chasing a hidden dream
Digging out of depression
Caring for their wife's cancer
Raising three children alone
Watching parents lose their minds
Raising a child with epilepsy
Grieving a suicide in the family
Recovering from an accident
Sleeping next to an unloving husband
Coping with social anxiety
Waiting for death
Being afraid

That's why
A call isn't returned
The bill wasn't paid
They showed up late
Their part wasn't prepared
She snapped at me
He cut me off
They didn't answer.

They put up a good show.
Competence is their cover.
So when they slip,
It must be about me.
262 · Jan 2017
Prayer for Being
Derek DM Jan 2017
Let's get on our knees
Put our hands together
Press our faces into the sunlight
Feel the cool air in nostrils flared
Let our mind wander with the wind
Into our loves and yearnings
Until they become part of the morning
A wave in the tidal pool of living
Until we rise parched
Lips dried from our breath
And we have found ourselves
In the sway of our elms
In the dancing songs of our robins
And in the crunching snow.
260 · Jan 2017
Autopilot
Derek DM Jan 2017
Snooze
Lumbered drink
Roused, yet tired think
Drive
Our Rutted drone
Piloted, by hand alone
Sit
Fluorescent stain
Clicked, nothing gained
Rest
No auger true
Spun, no drilling through
Snooze
Originally written in 2013.
258 · Aug 2017
Art
Derek DM Aug 2017
Art
There is no art.
Only the scribblings of madness
Bled onto a paper or canvas
Dying to run out
To cure in the heat
Of our own light
Where it birthed
And died
In the same breath
Of each stroke
In each every hue
The story of us
leaks into the air
Onto a medium
That is set before us
on long sodden sheets
Originally white and pure
We then set apart
To begin
There is no art
Only Sin.
Our expression is part of us. Quit judging it.
257 · Mar 2017
Whiskey
Derek DM Mar 2017
Is there any thing that holds so dear
With the constant clucking in my ear?
In a coursing heat pumping through
Till fills my chest when I see you.

Nothing so much tho brave engendered
To gaze upon this curve so tender
Where the force of life and living grows
Behind thine eye and ears and nose

Supple sheet of melting wax caress
In covered stone beating now in excess
The moment and means of all my fill
Joined and released in a silken still.
257 · Jan 2017
July Parade
Derek DM Jan 2017
The dull sparks of gradual attrition
Burn across the wheel and blade
In ever shaping blunt ambition
We stand back from the 'ol parade

Behind marching bands, trumpeteers
Sorcerers and demon trainers walk
Firetrucks, flags and summer beer
The passing crowds, stand and balk

The train goes off into a new track
Where do we go from here?
254 · Jan 2017
Cutting
Derek DM Jan 2017
The ridges of flesh
under your voice's blade rise
To penetrate consciousness,
to feel so alive
Yet the blood of our vows,
The meat of our methods
Consecrates our bonds
It is the lines that I love
Not the smooth tenderness
of your holy innocent
The calloused notches of your
vanity caught between thus
Where the real blade lies to us all
The wet release of our sins
Across skin, across skin
Until, again,
and again
You give in

To the rise of our breath
and the fall of our cuts
In the middle of days
Murderous justice
the collusion of cells
cold calculated severance
in karmic conscious rebellion
Is where we will collide
252 · Mar 2017
Hypocrisy
Derek DM Mar 2017
I don't ever see
the reasoning
behind your knee
or the beat you'll be
in reckoning
when you come to me

But bent in holy
parsoning
S wept in time
Along the trees
reasoning
but not in mind

Keep me here
Begging
Beckoning to be
in houses of the holy
longing
to be free
249 · Jan 2017
Flies
Derek DM Jan 2017
I just now need to close my eyes
As I drown within a swarm of flies
Never quite landing but always near
a Loud incessant buzzing I hear
If I could pick even one out
and Quash it down, I've no doubt
Another buzz would take its place
In a horrid kind of futile race
Where I'd hurry now, rush about
Out run, out move this massive cloud
Instead, just sit now and close my eyes
Feel the breeze of wings go by
Like angels formed in rotted pulp
Not here to harass or even help
Whirring about here and fro
Just a moment in our nature's show
Or maybe we are the fly.
248 · Aug 2017
Walking In the Night
Derek DM Aug 2017
We walk ever into the night
Hands unclasped
Heel to toe
Trying not to stumble
I can only hear your breath
Sense that you are there
But otherwise
We walk ever into the night
Alone.

Until
Our fingers collide and mesh
Matching steps
Into a path of darkness
Where I feel you
And your breath
In cadence with mine
Into the darkness, sublime
248 · Dec 2017
Nowhere to go
Derek DM Dec 2017
The Front
A muddy black line
of demarcation
In the filled
treads of boots
Trudged through
the rain of your
tempers and
lost intentions
Now stuck between
making a peace
and fighting on
a losing battle
where holding
our arms
is the only
yet wrong
place to go
Nowhere to win
Nothing left to lose
Every day is a struggle.
245 · Oct 2017
LONG Lay
Derek DM Oct 2017
we lay there on cotton
betwixt each limb of thread
woven covers of soft
Fibrous fingers touched
the light skin mellow
in window-diffused light
where spun yarns and yard
pull us down into the flats
along valley floors of arms
and legs crossed in hope
of feeling the lightness
bound by the pressure
of your breath on my cheek
Luxurious soft air
brushed by soft shuttle
atop my body and soul
243 · May 2017
A Memory
Derek DM May 2017
It's raining outside
There's no one about
Just droopy eyes
and forever shade
Pushing deep breaths
Into a wet shiver
That wash clean
The salty drops
Of  a morning empty
Except the shiny dew
Of when I met you.
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