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Apr 2020 · 144
Brutal Questions
Joshua S Bailey Apr 2020
I’m standing at the cross roads
Hoping I see you.
To meet you in the morning fog
in the crystal dew
To sit you down and talk awhile,
bout men like you.
How you walk so tall, and broad,
But the mirror really captures you.
Summer wasps, a salt facade
A face in the burning blue.
All in all it’s flaws, how you choose,
Which road had the map for you?

What you’ve got is a given
Until you have lost it
Why swim in feelings
When they all taste awful?
Where is the limit
To nowhere, cut off from:
Unlimited visions of myself feeling awful.

If your questions are brutal, there’s no way to block it,
Already mourning the loss of our boxes
Joshua S Bailey Jul 2019
An abstract is just make-believe
Named places, marked geometry;
An idea to differentiate it from me.
No matter the way we chop it,
It waits, takes, and gives equally.
                      
I wish more than that, fools could see-
the same goes for reality.
An idea used to separate eternity.
No matter the way we break it,
the whole persists eternally.
    
Ninety-nine pieces of entirety.
Dec 2018 · 200
I Was The Wild
Joshua S Bailey Dec 2018
The rat:
the beast so vile
That filth that coats my mind,
In the back, like some cracked tile.
I passed the Stacked earth like a map pile.
These are Mad trials, yet
Glass vials of smiles,
Unabashed, I clashed against the profile.
But who made it with that style?

I walked on for endless miles.
The way was Lit up with candles, and a path to guide was laid in the fabric
of my mind. A track with No handles, and a drop from an endless high.
Light was anything but an object but neither was I.

Standing on the boundary between that one and this child,
Was a ghostly goat eating the flesh of time, as I passed, he howled out a ghastly cry, as if he was the baby, and I was the wild.
The child reached for me,
spoke mutely
With the voice of the dumb, and  pointed to the Edge.
“Run.”
A thousand steps,
a cadence,
a vision of a tree full of plums, with no voice, I heard a song impossibly sung,
A sound so primal, like beating drums.
With each step of my legs as they swung, my flesh began to burn.

Pain, in it’s belly I churned, For always, like a beast with a curse.
I pulled myself from agony’s lungs to be spat out, apt, yet undone.
And began to walk again as if I were young.
But everything felt like age, the scent of dying wood, or the drying veins beneath the elder’s hood.

I turned by the orchard to find nothing there, but an empty table with seventeen Silver chairs, and crystal ball slivers suspended in the air: The shards of a memory left empty and bare.
No portions or potions, just power and a Carpenter’s square.

I was a foreigner, lost somewhere.

The leaves that had painted the scene
Became a garnet vanir.
And the idea of peace came clear.
It was something, someone, somewhere other than here.

“Is there any place other than here?”
Poem about psychedelic experience
Feb 2017 · 1.1k
The Feast is for the Thin
Joshua S Bailey Feb 2017
There's a lady in the morning fog
who feeds on porcelain thoughts,
And she haunts the edges March.
There are no five point dancers
With their evening red and gold.
Ready and willing to tumble and fall.
Just her, alone; In the bog
listening to us all.

The beasts only swim, crawl, and fly
By the Sycamore, rotten and petrified.
In Death there is life
And all ears are amplified.

     "Testify."

"Are you the soul that brings fear?
The Specter of my own Heresy?
Get off the wind and answer me.
Will you light the wild and chant the Lord's Prayer?"

    
    "Through all my inequities I'll never
      know sin like you.
      Whip the poor and condemn the youth.
      Blame the ******!!!
      Clergymen tend to always do.


"We are justified!

To do what we do
Is the work of the lord!
Truth will always bend
To the ambassadors' works."


The feast is for the thin, chalked with divine
And those on shore: honest and rectified.
Breath is man's plight,
And all eyes lie.

There's a man waiting at the edge of dawn
Who purges a man of his own thoughts
He owns his defiled marsh.
There are no five point answers
Without their threaded holes
Steadily fulfilling to us all.
Just him, enthroned; on a rock
Judging us as we fall.
Joshua S Bailey Oct 2016
ALDOUS: ”Stead fast you poor soul,
     Ha! Luck shall know no bounds, bestowed upon the youth who only dream,
On the path, how drear to men and hearts,
Seldom should i know that begger’s start.
How age grasps and pulls apart. The gray too will pass on your chestnut seam.

So you too young Icarus will fly close to sun.

But Before those days have come ride the stage and fill the crowds with Belief.
Remind them why we Live, breathe, cry, laugh, and grieve.

And Go.
Bard,
sing along by yourself.
Let the men pile themselves just to hear.
Bare-witness.
For your brothers must be brought out of their pits.
Broken might he be and the err of many days weigh upon him.
He was stricken down. Speak to him of fresh earth,
  the harvest and blistering plow..
On sweat, the Sun ,and drought. Lament with him on summers wings.
        Brought from his lonesome cell he has prepared his chains, tears, and blistered hands as an offering.

So strike away.

Your strings must be the alter
.
You are his keeper; speaker against and for Kings.
Like Mercury carry your rod and branch. bring peace.
Take him away to these good things:
Sing song o’ God and far by the night,
lost in smoke.
Impart the verse and tune.
Forget not your words and wounds, and play them through.
Beget fresh memories laced with wine
In these things, the now that so often slips by masters of time.
Halls and circles where drunk men have lied and spoke, casted tongues and tales of old and young.
These too are righteous to memory, art an woe.
Wither your voice on spirit, soul,
And Ear.
Tie up his boots and coat, dance on yesteryear.
Paint god’s wrath and grace, esteem his deeds.
bring the morning star and remind us hunger and why we need.

Oh how it will burn at your belly, and brand the oak of your throat
You will breath again.
And so shall they shovel the callous and coal, brought back to fire by the warmth of the afterglow.


Chase the beer with happy thoughts, or you’ll always be lost.....

Smoke to reflect, sing to feel and yelp your jeers in good taste.

And Go.
Bard,
sing along by yourself.
Let the men pile themselves just to hear.
Bare-witness. “
an exerpt from a play i'm writing. This is a speech given to the main character by an older mentor like figure.
Aug 2016 · 436
Eighty Six
Joshua S Bailey Aug 2016
A daisy flash in the corner of my eye
Never mind my silver line.
I’ll watch this sky and dwell

But i’m new
But i’m new i tell myself.

Chase the sunset with black wine
and sew my thoughts across my hairline
It’s the drink or you that makes me melt
i’m through!
I’m through i tell myself.

It’s the slip for me and we’re eighty six babe.
And I’ll stay fixed in my ways.

I’m through

I’m through i’m through, i’m through.

You’ve got your truth
And I’ve got a view.
Aug 2016 · 414
Tar and Breath
Joshua S Bailey Aug 2016
Tar and breath, Oh that fire inside
Your feet were empty and light,
And I could taste her on you.

I got lost in the valley harms,
and we were lost in tongue and arms
around, around in my father’s car.
And i could taste her on you.

A title of terror and sliver pictures dismissed me.
The lanterns were paved, and misty.
my eyes were fogged and rays lit my hearts bazaar.
I lost them all that night twenty feet below the stars.
And i could taste her on you.

She was sweet, and mystic, and from the grey i drew
we shared a lover rolled for two.
Those embers are weak and forlorn
To my eyes they swept and tore.
The steam stole your feet and my love was past due.
And i could taste her all too.
Aug 2016 · 2.0k
The Dove and Crow
Joshua S Bailey Aug 2016
Oh dove how are you so bright,
when I the Crow so dark?
We both are,
but bird's lost in flight.
But I fear the Strawman's bark.

You, a target of gluttony, lust, and greed,
Pure of heart but long for that addictive seed.
And I, the blackened crow am shot by scorn
You are the rose by which my heart is thorned.

And you my blackened crow,
Your lie so simple
Why can't you be?
We are the same, but different.
Your ignorance and blindness set you free.
I too fear, but spiritual pestilence.
You are bound by the hands of ghosts,
shaded in death, you show bliss
In your sorrow day by and tomorrow,
you'll wait: a bird on a post.

— The End —