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Orion Schwalm Nov 2014
Saw it happen.
Witnessed it. Did not experience.
Yet, left with a more interesting outlook.
An objectivity can rise above. Settle down. Rework, reword, reward, rewarm.
WHY DID I SEE THIS. WHY WAS I CHOSEN FOR THIS RESPONSIBILITY.
Screaming in the large end of the megaphone.
Screaming for the world to let you down.
Clutching at the door handle, hoping to emerge into a forest of rifles, a city-hive of pollen pushers, an oasis of blood.
Suddenly it makes sense...communication without contact.

Words on a page, worms on a plate.
Wards an’ a cage, words in a place.

This is our medium, through which I can love you, for better or worse, the medium that is.
The medium carries a meaning without judgement.
The judgement, if and when the word is received, is irrelevant.

The last dead deer rises, taking back his rightful place as the last living deer in a dying world.
The green world empties its poison, sheds its thorns, ***** out its parasite.

The glass is half empty.
Now its half full.

The glass is empty of meaning.
Now its full of ****.

My skin is raw and bleeding.
My love is as real as rifles.
They both hurt.
In different ways.
A response to Bone Map by Sara Eliza Johnson.
Orion Schwalm Oct 2014
The first time in my life, I start turning the lens back into the dreams. Point the telescope a full 180 away from the moon, so the moon can see a **** good closeup of the craters on my face.
I go to sleep
                                         asking for it.

My dearest demons, tear me apart. I am ready to die. I have done everything I could...

And here you come:
                                   traipsing down the stairway to heaven, stepping extra hard
on the creaky ones.

I think it reminds you of the way I used to whine for you.

To you. My dear. MY dear.
                                              Help me God, I whisper into your ear as you     sleep,
                                              Hoping you would wake up in my dreams and save me,
                                              How the hell could a person ever feel so ******* weak.

A bitter branch, that wanted to be a tree trunk. That tried to become enormous.
That only got cut down in the end.

That's how I feel. Not what I am.
Part of the poem, not of the slam.
Separate worlds inside one room.
Wanting to capture the flower in bloom.

Enormous tree, watered regularly by the gardening company hired by the     CEO
of the real-estate company.

The only company I really have in this lonely lake of scheduled sprinklers
are gardeners giving me much more than thanks.

They cut my branches. My unsightly twigs are mulched. I share my tears with them. They take a lunch break. We're going pretty steady.
Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. Tick tock. Lub Lub. Goodnight. Help-
Orion Schwalm Aug 2014
Go to sleep, ****, ****, ****.
**** and sleep. Bleed and weep.

Stop.
Examine yourself.
Am I safe?
If yes, ****.
If no, yes.
Change positions.
Am I safe enough right now?

Check on that thought. Is it ok? Can it live here? Will it **** me?
No? No. No...

No...

Say alive. Say it.
Stay astride giant tantamounts of muse, Icarus flew too soon.

Silence freak. The silence freak.
Science, cheap talk, pseudospirituality.
Shut up that mouth, babbling on and on and off.
Off. Offal in the pig soup broth.

Charm her. Charm her. What else?
Charmed her. What else? Shut up, that's all.
Shut up and enjoy life fully, be abundant, free, intelligent, silent.
Keep it in the pants. Keep inside your ******* pants.

Feel the need to breed. The need to spill obscenities. You breathe in every other scream, to **** in dry, **** and dry, blow out all the seeds.

Aw **** my eye. Right in my eye. 1st contact. Claimed. In the Name.
Oh his Father, His Son, His Holy Zeitgeist.


Bigger words make a happy family. Tipping urns spill the trappings of the elite. Learn from our mistakes. Do not mistake taste. For feeling unafraid.

Goodbye, goodbye, I'm off the **** and sleep. The dose was too high, got right in my eyes, and several bars later the rhythm has faded and no tears are left with which to weep.
With a definite driving and subsiding of rhythm.
Orion Schwalm Jul 2014
I could be                                                                       inside your bones



                             or outside Earth's atmosphere



either way




the image                                                                        of your back turned




will                                               always.



be    etched      on           the           under                 mind



the sideless coins placed on my eyelids after i died

and in that dream of death


your face is always turning



but i never quite see your eyes




                                           .before
                                                .waking.
                                                      up.




What is love anymore? IS this what you wanted me to see? Nothing but
              this?

Constantly seeking out a smaller and smaller space to fit into.
                                  Pretty soon you'll cram yourself so small.
                                                       You will vanish.
From sight.


A speck of gold in the corner. A fleck of green in the dark.
A flicker of warmth in the winter when the fire won't start.

We've grown so incredibly old together.
I, taller, stronger. You, more emaciated...wiser.
Here's to separation of spaces.
Here's to someday being united.
Here's to...

            


                                                  Love.
Orion Schwalm Sep 2012
The call me...Captain Swurve.
They call me Captain Swurvey
They say my heart's half gone
As it's plagued with rot and scurvy!
They said I'd chase the sunset
And drink us all to drought
I said nay boys, I'll follow the tides
And leave no liquor-starved crewman without.
Now, as the legend rests
Just like the setting sun
I'll dream of pretty wenches
That did my poor heart shun
And raise my flask o' whiskey
And tip up my old gun
And wish that it was ***.
Surrounded by the sea
Of people looking over me
The captain that I've always wished that I could have the ***** to be,
Is not exactly what he seems.

I'm the captain, sodden and somber.
I own no land, and I owe no man no man's land, which is a place I've chosen to wander.
Take that as you will, I take wasteland as a million metaphors, dried up, littered on, desert that used to be a golden shore. Back then Bikini Babes would just come to right up you and ask you to rub tanning lotion on their backs, and you somehow didn't even have to flirt to feel attractive.
                                                     ­             This place doesn't exist.
                                                      I made it up. That beach never had any water.
There was no such thing. Like perfect pitch, or total bliss or uncontrollable mental disorders.        

Yeah, I owe barrenness to y'all. I'd never get any peace and quiet, or the zen of a much needed vacation
                                           without that feeling you get in a crowd of total isolation.

It's hummmmmmming....of a million minds, a crowd of buzzzzzzing bumble *******, deciphering my metaphors.
**** metaphors, listen to what I speak, when I'm not up on a pedestal.

You know I used to want to be an astronomer? Just a fun fact.
Not because I never had enough tact to be an actor,
Just because I was always rather apt
                    to just sit back
                                   and watch the
rapture.

Bowl of popcorn over here on the left.
Bottle of **** right here on the right.
And the most beautiful woman God could create, raining down her fiery scorn on me, loving every minute of this cataclysmic *******.
I am Captain Swurvey       and       I        like      to      ****.
Everything beautiful is useful to me,
Everything else just *****.
And whether I want you to or not, you'll probably believe every word I say.
STOP.

I am Captain Swurve
And I am sailing swervingly
Unsettling the neighbors and uprooting your search for worth and immortality.
I do it because people with a purpose make me nervous,
Looking only at the surface
                                           You never go much deeper
                                            And I'm skimming along on that surface,
                                             But all I ever yearned for was the chance to dive overboard
                                               And drown myself in the deep end of your ocean.

I'd like to see your coral reefs, and be swept up by all sorts of riptides, and undercurrents, and
maybe
just maybe
I'd really love to see the bottom before I die.

I imagine all beautiful lights. That no one has ever seen. It's another world down there. And well...

                                                        ­                                          You know I've always wanted to see your Marianas Trench...

Switch around, we're in space, I'm sailing through the sun storms, desperately reaching as far out as I can only to crash on the rocks of your atmosphere.  Reeling off, and spinning past millenia, knowing there would never be enough space in the universe to keep us apart for too long. You couldn't hear me scream, but if you'd let me in there...you would have heard the battle crying inside me. If your brain's synapses are stars, then your heart is one insignificant little planet amidst the skies that by some stroke of hell managed to create life as I know it.

That metaphor
has been done before
I'm used up
i'm not original BUT
GOD
**** IT
I can't be the only person who's ever fallen in love.         I wouldn't ever want to be.    
Because then you wouldn't see much in me. Without these seeds... It'd be kind of like a wasteland.
But *******,
I am so glad
That humans learned how to plant.


Talk about self-absorbed, this kid writes a poem about his own celebrity persona which he pretty much invented! Well, there have been some modifications I can't take credit for.

You choose what you want to believe about me.
But I am just a person
My name is Captain Swurvey.

...
Orion Schwalm Sep 2012
Help me out for a second here.
Help me out of here.
I'm going out of my mind/But I'm/Lying/I'm not/It's too hot/And claustrophobic
So... I'll bounce back and forth in rhythm/Listenin' to myself givin'/All you beautiful people allegorical head.
Audience is/Providence of/Godliness through/Loneliness when/Each and every one of you make/Up a giant intuitive/Entity of empathy that/I wish I could make love to.

What?
I wish I could talk to, you,
but I often find that people look to me to be aloof,
but I also find the need to persuade myself into honesty.
But you gotta know, I just think words can mean so much more, or so much littler than the effort it takes to say them and it scares me all the time.

Sometimes people call me poet. I can't talk to people, they all think I'm silly and that makes me feel awkward cuz I have a lot sadness  and put too much importance on the common interaction between me and the rest of my race.
So I sing instead of talking, Run instead of walking, improv without blocking, write. cuz I'm scared, I'm so ******* scared of something turning out unexpectedly, and I'm in love, I'm so ******* in love with that fear.

Thank you for giving this amount of silence. I haven't been listening to it very well. You let me take the stage and drown out all your lovely silence with my under-used, somewhat nasally voice. I'm sorry.
I owe you a turn. I really do. for listening

Go ahead...



Say something real
-Say something awful
*I miss the voices that used to talk to me
Orion Schwalm Aug 2012
Enough faking it. Come already.

Feel  like it's right, for once. Like I'm right, this determined swerving from right to left.
Turning East and West into a way to circumvent the crest.
Fallen into yet another losing game of chess.
I

Left a small population of very tall buildings to make another attempt at living.
Dried my eyes and the blood filling them congealed.
Injected the whole of another tube of "real" tropical fruit filling right into my pulmonary like, maybe if someone would eat it before the rot set in for once... Do you know the way back to happiness?
Cuz I'm about to board another bus with a flashing sign on the front that reads: home...
and for some **** reason...I'm wondering how you'd feel about that.
Right? Or is it wrong? Or am I just all that's left?
OK? Well...how are you?
Just okay?
Well
Stalemate.

I didn't sleep when I was in your arms. Too busy thinking about,  Why did I hold onto something that was bound to leave with the next cold morning breeze?
"We always slept better together."  ???
Probably because the windchill of my staggered circular breathing kept you warm.
Shrugging off the blanket I became, when the night finally let up, and the heat of the sun made you too warm
I fell off you.
Checkmate.
You probably felt like I was passing away.
Nah, I had a foot in the coffin door.
Gotcha, King me.
Wrong game? oh..

Thus then must we return,
To the greater hands
Who is trolling us along?
Tricks, Pieces, Mirrors, begone
Of the ones who took love willingly, no more crying, no more crying.
Right where we belong.
We are seeds.



It's a hard thing for a man to grow old. To watch his hard earned muscles erode as stone does.
But stones roll forward...still.
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