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 Aug 2015 ray
david badgerow
floating backward
on my back down a muddy river
at a cloud's pace banked by willows & sweet clover
with long branches of oaks stretching across to meet
hot sunshine burning spots on my face forearms & stomach
an invisible hand forcing my eyes to stay closed
& projecting dancing pinwheels of
curled peacock fire on my thin eyelids
i can hear the echo voices of everyone on
shore whirling in the soft wet part of my brain
so awfully warbled by the water in my ears as
i lay there with top water debris spurting playfully
from my lips with a pinched smile
carved between my cheeks
thinking what a shame it'd be to drown
no longer caressed by willow branches trailing
across the surface

to sink down
under a blue sky during a cloud race
into a quiet place where words no longer mean anything
& all i can hear anyway is the profound hiss
of a dying airbubble slipping away from my nose
open my eyes to look i can see it escape
& explode ascending into sunlight
refracting just eight feet away
how wonderful it is to drift down into
the soft silk blanket of dark water
with all the pain & piano music in the world
trapped in my pounding heart
as my friends dive bomb to save me
the drumroll kicks in with the dramamine
& sweet pear wine i had in a pack lunch
to keep away the eager panic hunger
it's accompanied by the soft indie
plink & pluck of violin strings &
someone in suspenders blowing a harmonica
as the nothingness struggles to enfold me
crawling over the shiny pores of my face
while my friends peel back
at it in layers
by re-breathing
their whiskey into my lungs
beating my chest
with their closed fists
& blowing my nose into a t-shirt in the sand
 Aug 2015 ray
Coop Lee
sawtooth
 Aug 2015 ray
Coop Lee
there is a fire, somewhere.
the sun/sun making mad love to the mother earth like hey.
hey to the water,
hey to the waves,
           & all bits below.

            endless mad love.

& electric, sing the youth.
swung the tooth of photosynthetic children trickling like tributaries
into/onto/toward all worldly tufts.
prisoners of the wild.
prisoners of the city, yet swords of something like the heart.
           like an amber ale popped spare
& nowhere but up,
baby.

old cassette-tape
as bottleneck netting. this is
stellar
fishing.

            who’s wet khakis?

mine.

visitors from the great stars and lush.
tall nettle, tall tent-
city &
popping sap campfires. acid-
dropped and cooler cocked.
rekindle this
                bliss,
                cosmos.
 Aug 2015 ray
Akemi
grasping over
 Aug 2015 ray
Akemi
This vacant warmth
I ******* hate it

I think I lapsed and missed my own funeral
Shrugged and felt my head roll off
But did nothing

Because what’s the point, anyway?
What’s the ******* point?
3:52am, August 10th 2015

I can't escape this feeling
that I have lost something irreplaceable,
and without name.

I keep reaching out and grasping space.

Was it stolen, lost, or never here?
Has age merely revealed this gap, or deepened it?

There was never anything here.
There was never anything here.
There was never anything here.
There was never anythinghere.
there was never anythighere
therwas neveranythign here
therrwasneveranygthniever
therawasnevrabtghere
therwanevthnigeher
therneveher
 Aug 2015 ray
Coop Lee
[sweet pungent synthesis]
always with dank hysterical women demonstrating the distilled liquid elixir of their many years in isolation.
they are the nitrogen-rich followers of an ultraviolet shrine, such is
a photosynthetic life-form, reacting/enacting/enhancing.
they reach for holes in the moon &
on four-legged fumes carbonize seeds into sons and daughters. birth/
life.
all flowers ache forth to display color and/or
their varietals of hairy oil content.
to dip psychotropics, thus the worship of brain frequency and light.
fresh progress,
the sugar crystal compounds impacting, intact, and swollen.
trichomes, like huddled little masses of grandbabies bowed upon the ridge.
she drips
in dance and derives her form from properties plucked by time,
by moms, and pops.
to discover is to find purity in a moment.
pure travel/ pure
death.
this growing force,
this apparition of sound within me. organics.
organisms bound by great beauty and failure.
sense not the vivid panic, or the shock of last black, but hold true
to an inner joyous/outer motionous, tessellation that is, this
fluttering of us.
us suit of hearts.
suit of leaves.
the fusion of two bodies far beyond substantial pressure.
 Jul 2015 ray
david badgerow
i remember taking morning impulse beach trips with william
to the white sand on the right hand coast of old florida
wearing sunglasses on our eyes
and our hearts in our front shirt pockets
jesus, must have been twenty ten because
i was too young to drink in bars
and he couldn't drive
the windows were down and we were catching
intense sun on the opposite sides of our faces
listening to a playlist of songs we wanted played at our funerals
swore we'd be there for each other forever
as we choked down stolen purple vitamin waters
trying to smoke a divine bowl while discussing
the advantages of miller high lifes over
pabst blue ribbons for light beach drinking with
two tabs each on our tongues or buried in our cheek-meat
as we crossed that lion's bridge
dreaming we'd drift off into that cloudless blue sea-sky

i remember falling in love
for what must have been the first time
half drunk on champagne and ojay
blasted out and overdosing on sunlight
sitting pretty on the carpet floor with jennifer
with our legs tangled together
whispering secrets playing with shiny trinkets
and small meaningful totems
while the other boys laughed
and smoked on the balcony

i'm suppposed to be writing the world's greatest poem
but i get distracted by fractal ocean memories
because i'm already twenty-five and nowhere special
we've both sobered up by now i guess but i
saw ol' bill just the other day and we still
find time to laugh and sing to each other over tacos
he'll be married soon and i've learned finally that it takes
more than ******* someone to keep my bones warm
we've gotten our **** together so to speak but seperately
i'm still getting used to revealing myself to myself
figuring out how to be honest with the little boy in the mirror
how to be in love with my big nose
and that i'm really only twenty four
 Jul 2015 ray
C J Baxter
Rub-a-dub-gubbed,  
three men in a club,
And who do you think they were?
The addict, the faker,
The first time taker.
They all sailed away in a flea.
Twas enough to make a man aware.
 Jul 2015 ray
C J Baxter
From a window on the third floor of an old abandoned brick building, I would smoke till my lungs felt near to collapsing. I went on my own, and I told no one of it: not my friends nor my family, nor any passing creature. I would sit there from when the sun first started to die until the cloak of night had fallen and enveloped the city, and the lights ( those maddening lights) would set the black fabric ablaze in the sky. They danced like ash eagerly above a fire, and promised such heat and hope; and my city needed hope, as gas filled girls and powdery boys had lost their way, covered in glitter and thinking they would sparkle forever. I shined less brightly myself, but I knew that would one day be my blessing.

One night, in the middle of Winters grasp, I set off home through my cheap shiny city, and I couldn’t shake the ache in my chest; It could have been the twenty snout I had just rattled into my lungs, but the pain was in my head too: My head and my heart were talking with the solemnity of a wake. I walked till I seen the the old granary that lay helplessly, then half bulldozed into the ground. Such beautiful, strong and defiant brick was to make way for glistening plastic houses that seemed more designed for mannequins and letting agents than human beings of Glasgow.  And the clyde seemed to twist in the turmoil of agony as it too watched the tearing of it’s town.  

So I set off, with my chest growing heavier, and feeling my will collapse until I reached the bank of the river, stripped off and jumped in…We’ve drifted off together ever since.  

Twenty years later, and I live in the penthouse atop the plastic mountain that hangs grotesquely over the sickly clyde. It’s the price I have to pay to be close to my love- I wouldn’t blame you for thinking my love to be the river, for it is in many ways, but I am referring to my fiancé Milly, who’s parents own properties all over the city and were very insistent that we live in a good area and a good house, which of course stripped my mannish integrity to zilch.  Milly is warm, understanding and organically beautiful. She puts up with my endless wandering and lack of love for anything new, brushing it aside with a smile, and is always there to carry me.

The day I asked her to Marry me, I took her to the spot we had first met: The banks of the river where I was lurking like a little creep  scrawling angst-filled and childish poetry, and she was walking home from a night of glitter and ecstasy.  We chatted for ours that night, and she dared me to jump into the river. I did and she followed. And the day I asked her to marry me she cried yes and then took the ring from my hands and threw it into the river.

And we've drifted ever since.
Romantic Surrealism
 Jul 2015 ray
The Messiah Complex
Land of the free
words fed intravenuously
like opiates into opened veins
until the lies they tell us become truth

Propaganda filled drips
drown out the screams of the innocent
killed by fear and misdirected hatred
and soldiers fighting "wars" on terror

How then does the aggressor become hero?
while handing out oppression labelled as democracy
liberty  comes encased in the shell of a bullet
and if you resist.........freedom

comes quicker than you wish
 Jul 2015 ray
Monika
the only time you dream about her anymore is when you’ve drank so much you swear you can see her name at the bottom of the bottle and suddenly you’re punching your fist through the dry wall and calling out for her like maybe she’ll answer like maybe that’ll bring her back. it kind of makes you think that dreams aren’t random because you wake up thinking you can still smell her on your sheets and your chest caves in and you think maybe the part where she comes back isn’t the dream, maybe the dream is the part where she ever left in the first place. you keep looking at your hands and you can’t remember how to keep them from shaking because she always did it for you and now they aren’t shaking because you’re nervous but because her smile won’t leave your mind and every time that song comes on you have to turn it down otherwise you’ll hear her laughter again and this time you don’t think you’ll be able to survive the pain. you walk down the street and you think you can see her curly hair and her pale skin but you remember she’s gone she’s gone she’s gone but she’s never really gone because you can still taste her on your tongue every time you drink whiskey or red wine or anything, really it’s like you can’t remember anything but her. you can taste her on your lips like she’s still here with you but your fantasies are always ruined by the memory of her leaving and your arms feel empty even though she was gone before she was ever really yours to hold and you ask yourself why you can’t read books anymore you tell yourself it’s not because your eyes only see her name it’s not because every word on the page reminds you of her tell yourself the reason you don’t write anymore isn’t because all you can ever write anymore is her name stop remembering the way she held onto your hips so tightly like she was scared you were going to fly away and maybe you were but you always wanted to fly away with her but she was too fragile and the wind took her away you tried so hard to hold onto her you tried you did you did you did
 Jul 2015 ray
Spencer Craig
sick sally ran against
natural cures like cannabis
but she agreed to meet
a dealer in the street
and she got hit by an ambulance
MEH
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