Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Makiya Feb 2012
At first it was bare and ripe for the picking -
my chest was pulsating under your weight you
stripped my heart like an exotic dancer would:
all eyes and no hands.

After the initial grasp, the puff puff pass and the
smiles exchanged between our legsarmslimbs and the
time it took to be rid of the excess skin crowding us in,
we breathed in sweet, sweet fumes of spring and said
things kept in our mouths, light like ecstasy but
heavier than the average promise.

But the hours it took to argue the hunger away made our
heads ache and eventually our jaws could clench no longer,
our eyes could see no more of each other - just smoke and
******* clouding our way - it was lost,
whatever it was, it

was lost.
Katie Lo  Jan 2014
Carcinogens.
Katie Lo Jan 2014
All my life I've been lectured to stay away from the dangerous things in life.
Stray animals, unknown substances, drugs, alcohol, and the things in between.
But no one ever warned me about the dangers of falling in love.
The way it resembles all the listed dangers.
Oh how love can wound my heart as if it has clawed it bit by bit.
Oh how love is so world known yet so strange and confusing.
Oh how love takes me to the highest clouds with addiction being the aftermath.
Oh how love can make me fumble, release my secrets, and bring me a pounding ache the morning after.
But no one ever warned me about the dangers of falling in love.
Maybe because love in all reality is far worse than any spiked drink.
Worse than a pill that drives me insane.
Worse than being mauled by sharp teeth and claws.
Love is more of a carcinogen.
Flowing through my bloodstream, unwanted, hurtful.
A substance I can't remove, despite the many attempts.
Love is far too dangerous for one to speak of.
Love is something so dangerous we refuse to accept it as an actual threat.
Scott Veinland  Sep 2013
Smoking
Scott Veinland Sep 2013
Fueled by the very thing that destroys me

Motivated by a sinister cause

Driven by a physical addiction birthed from nothing except pure temptation
and the psychological need to please an older brother

I can't change

Fear of rejection
Fear of crave
Fear of failure

*"Carcinogens will **** you, but you won't even notice."
Canaan Massie Oct 2012
So I'm a "fly" white guy,
with "Jet" black tendencies,
Try to be a nice guy,
But somehow end up the enemy.
I'll treat you like a princess,
But I'm a fort,
You can't get into me.

It makes no sense to me.

How did this knight in shining armor,
Get slain by the dragon?
So once upon a time,
I was a hero,
Now I'm a has-been.
Last in the castle for I belong with the Pagans,
Slaying distressed damsels,
Giving hell to the angels
With strangers wrapped in mangers,
Destined for greatness.
Trapped within this labyrinth of my cranium.

But when it comes to blame,
My pigmentation begins to change,
But this time it's not my shame.
'Cause you play the same game
That the dames did before you.
You're no different.
You're not worth a fortune.
Fortunately, you revealed your horns for me.
It's torturing how for me it ended horribly,
and you moved on to the same dude you ******* before me.

Love's supposed to be patient,
Love's supposed to be kind,
Instead it's a battlefield
Filled with landmines.

You say it's false,
that nice guys finish last?
Well clarify why I'm starin',
At taillights from my past.
They say when you have everything,
You give nothing back.
So I guess that explains
Why your feelings for me lack.
You're like "You're a white guy,
That tends to be black.
Well how in the hell
Can I get used to that?"
That's *******.
You're afraid of commitment.
That's why you had to end it,
Before it could begin with.
You're a cynical, sinister,
Hypocritical minister,
Angelic sinner sent to incriminate innocence.
Evil's equivalent,
Yet as sweet as carcinogens.
If heartbreak were a game,
Girl, you would be winnin' it.
If my soul were a food,
You would've finished it.
I had a confident conscience,
but girl you diminished it.
Listen kid,
I get you're immature and ****,
But don't go and slander my name
When you used to worship it.

Love's supposed to be patient,
Love's supposed to be kind,
Instead it's a battlefield
Filled with landmines.
This is actually a song I wrote. I will put the link up when I can.
Cunning Linguist  May 2014
Arson
Cunning Linguist May 2014
Mad Hatter's getting narcissistic without his tea
That's how I feel when I can't burn things
but you can't spell "arsonist" without A-R-T

Maybe I'm crazy but honestly it's therapy

Bolt the door to the party and listen to them scream
Oceans of commotion won't extinguish my latest masterpiece
So kick back, fire up a cig
Get that influx of carcinogens
Conducive to my sick mind

Twisted nihilist
Got a pack of matches
Now I'm dreaming in a pipe

Erupt into flames
Sit back and look at all the pretty lights
The way they dance in the wind
Such an alluring sight
It's really just poetry in motion
As I watch through kaleidoscopic eyes

I'll smoke to that.
You make me want to burn down a
kindergarten and roast mallows upon
the smoldering remains
Aric Wheeler Aug 2013
I had a girlfriend in kindergarten but she had a cleft pallet.

Today I drove the Lexus to my job that pays minimum wage.

I'm not ***** I'm just making macaroni and cheese.

Your fake words carry more carcinogens than my pack of cigarettes and I only smoke on the weekends.

Yesterday I was about to eat a cookie but I said to myself, "diabetes, diabetes, diabetes."

I have decided that I am sad.

Sometimes I want to look like a *****.
David Hall  Jun 2014
I am dying
David Hall Jun 2014
I am dying
The thought occurs to me every now and then
Jolting my psyche like a bucket of cold water on a sleeping drunk

I just turned 32 this year
I can already feel the cold tendrils of deaths advance
Some days I can even smell its putrid breath on the back of my neck

I’m not dying of anything immediate
No nothing as glamorous as a drug overdose or a gunshot wound
My death more than likely won’t make national news

I am dying
It is a slow and pitiful death
Caused by a lethal mix of age, apathy and neglect

Every day I poison myself a little more
Complex carbohydrates and processed sugars in every meal
Caffeine carcinogens and aspartame to wash the poison down

I can feel my muscle waste away
As I sit 10 hours a day answering the same inane questions
Over and over again to earn the right to what’s left of my meager existence

I am dying
This must be the case because I am certainly not living
At best I am merely surviving, simply continuing to exist

Maybe tomorrow or maybe in 20 years
Even if I quit my job and start an organic vegan diet
Even if I exercise, meditate and confess my sins

I am dying
Nico Reznick  May 2018
Howlback
Nico Reznick May 2018
(A follow-up to "Whimper", which was written in response to "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg)

I have seen the best insanity of my generation destroyed by the worst minds.
I have seen humans turn into robots and the robots turn to fascism
because of What The Internet Told Them.
I have seen the weaponisation of our most rancid fears and watched
in horrified fascination as our inner demons got their own agents.
I have seen and felt the horizon constrict so tight, it’s getting
hard to swallow.

You have to understand, this isn’t what I wanted.
You have to realise, this isn’t what I meant.

This isn’t crazy.
This isn’t pure, natural, spontaneous crazy.
This is synthetic madness, manufactured madness,
genetically modified, mass-produced, mass-marketed madness:
As Seen On Television; approved by test audiences;
none of the calories, all of the carcinogens.
This goes beyond the deplorable allure of a free red hat.
This goes beyond dinosaur-dodo-dumb nostalgia for a blue passport
and a golden age that never was.
This is why you hire Cambridge Analytica.
This is the Project For The New American Sentence:
The message is, “It’s chaos out there, people; do what the hell you want.”
And the echo chamber,
and the echo chamber,
and the echo chamber,
and even the rage…
even the rage isn’t real.

Mercenaries, not maniacs.
No more lunatic songs.
That howling you hear is only feedback:
an endlessly shrieking loop of absolutely nothing, broadcast on
every channel, into every dream, until the fillings in our teeth buzz
and our institutions tear themselves apart, as
component materials hit resonant frequency.

This is how the world ends: Not with a whimper, but with
static.

We got the message wrong, giving credence to people
whose hatred is their only art.  They taught us
to avoid such human folly as Ruinous Empathy, to
distrust painful, decaying love, when these were the
things that might have saved us.
There’s a poet I know, who served in ‘Nam, who thinks
he might have even forgiven Nixon.  
Field Commander Cohen has checked out of the Chelsea Hotel,
deciding we wanted it too dark for him.
Too many of our heroes have turned out to be monsters.  We're haunted by
historic *** crimes, Cold War ghosts and the knowledge that we
could have done things differently.

The message was supposed to be, “It’s chaos, be kind.”

There's no such thing as a stable genius, but we've got
fake news and alternative facts; we're discovering the side-effects
of living post-consequence.  We're hypernormalised.  We're
past shock; our incredulity stretched beyond its
elastic limit; we've broken satire and nothing is really funny any more.

Welcome to the Disinformation Age.  These are our Interesting Times:
Glee Club and Gun Rehearsal; bloodied blue uniforms;
tears for the victims of the Bowling Green Massacre;
an early by-election for Batley and Spen;
very fine people on both sides; Thoughts & Prayers, our
only surplus, the ultimate fiat currency;
poverty **** and the return of social ****** (71 dead at Grenfell, NHS black alerts, rickets making a comeback, lead in the water); Drink the Kool-aid; humans like Kool-aid - **** stars on polygraphs; Netflix and Kompromat; the portrait
in Kissinger’s attic; Ayn Rand for Beginners; Corporate cosmology
and casino capitalism; government by gaslight; constructive ambiguity
to preserve a kakistocracy; bring me
the head of Roger Stone!  #EndOfEmpire;
Windrush and Stupid Watergate…

I said we needed our madmen back, but not like
this.  Not
these posers, these gangsters, these Quislings…  
These are merely bad actors, playing to the crazy dollar,
but do not doubt their sanity,
which is icy and cynical and monstrous.  But,
in the cold fusion reactor of that sanity, they are unknowingly
forging a new generation of madmen, whose madness
will be righteous and real and burn with
a pure, perfect heat that cleanses and cauterises.  They
will know the difference between human
and humanoid.  They will be less afraid than us, less quick to
hate strangeness. They will use their craziness to
create, not destroy.  They have
already begun.

I know this because
I have witnessed six minutes and twenty seconds of silence that blazed hotter, howled louder than all your Fire and Fury.  I have seen
riot cops in Baton Rouge turn whiter and recoil in fear from serene, dignified, unarmed surrender. I
have heard the young sweetly whisper to the old,
‘Fine, but you’re wrong, and we’re right, and we will outlive you.’
You can’t hide that behind a wall.
You can’t say that life doesn’t matter.
You can’t filibuster the future.
Everything was forever, until it was no more.

Our madmen are gone, and they’re not coming back.  
But there will be others.
The best minds of their generation will not be destroyed by your sanity.
Follow-on to "Whimper", posted here: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1513932/whimper/
Abby Jan 2014
I know everything about
tobacco.
Cancer stats,
asthma stats,
usage rates among teens
tweens
and young adults.
Give me five minutes
and you can have a list of the taxes on tobacco
arranged by state
(alphabetical or by rank?)
and a dozen studies that all say
"smoke up, Johnny, it's good for you!"

Data is my nicotine and I am hooked.

We're surrounded by
Smoke, Lies, and the Nanny State
and no one gives a ****.
Follow the rules
and hide your smoke,
your *****,
and keep away
from the kids.
Carcinogens in hot dogs
are all well and good
because there's
"nutritional value"
but you can't eat a cigarette.

Eat your lies and **** your e-cigarette like a lollipop because that's the cool thing these days.

— The End —