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Alex Hoffman Dec 2015
The only proper way to be a conversationalist is to convince yourself that you’re boring. If you can strip back the hard shell of the ego, and look down on yourself from the eyes of an apathetic God, you will likely (and hopefully) see just how boring you really are. It isn’t a sin to be boring, in fact there are many advantages to honest self-depreciation.

The main advantage, is the way you approach a conversation. “Interesting” people find it difficult to silence the affected score-keeper that dominates their internal dialogue and ruins any chance of an honest and engaged conversation. It is the voice that reminds you to show interest with your body language, and keep a dumb happy gaze laser pointed into their eyes. This dialogue is obsessed with authenticity and genuine conversation, and therefore a natural sociopath.

Luckily, you are the stunning definition of boredom, an extracted dictionary cut-out of un-interesting, and nobody could possibly give a rats-*** what you have to think—least of all the Voice that controls the inner-dialogue. That Voice has packed it up to find a more interesting vessel…maybe the person standing across from you in conversation. 


Because you are so boring, and they are the Oxford personification of intellect and fascination, you should pay careful attention to what they say—no time to worry about how they’re perceiving your reaction to whatever it is they’re saying. You are too busy to notice what sort of body language you may or may not be using to validate their half of the conversation. Instead, your time is spent carefully hanging on their every word, digesting it and projecting the whole bit into a colourful scene in your imagination. Instead, you’re too lost in the excitement of their infinitely more interesting life and impossible wealth of knowledge offered to you with each word that they speak. Instead, you are actually listening to the words that come out of their mouth and not the ones that speak to you from the inside of your own mind.

This is what it means to be in conversation. This was the point of our social nature. And in a world of needy social-media junkies grabbing at the cuffs of potential ‘followers’ and ‘likes’ and trendy passer-by’s, the last thing anyone needs is the high-pitched whine of another “interesting” millennial.

Lucky for you, you boring sack of yawning sloths, that you aren’t interesting too.
Keith W Fletcher Jun 2016
Broke
Unable to finalize any purchase
Checking
For change in the last places that one searches
Insufficient
To the point I'm unable to ward off the throes of destitution
Bankrupted
By devaluing those who have not made restitution
Insolvent
To the point of having to fight off the urge to curse
Disallowed by the prose that places value and give credit....to verse
Denied
Any credit accrued....maybe even unearned
Reevaluation
With no accounting for the time you
SPENT
Learning what you have learned
Depreciation or Appreciation
Cannot be quantified by the lack of someone.saying thanks
Interest will eventually be of value
Once accrued... but for now I must accept
That I'm simply overdrawn at my memory banks
Investment in my own value
Will allow me growth
In my own ...
......personal
Checking account
Helping me in balancing  the books
Keeping me payed up and happy
BY
Always giving others their true valuation
  So that ego doesnt become a currency
That is subject to... such a devastating inflation
Kagami  Jan 2016
Offense
Kagami Jan 2016
When the spit leaves his mouth like acid,
Speckles my face with scars and tears,
Insults are last place in my minds marathon.

The self depreciation is a serrated knife,
Plucking at the strings in my chest.
And with each snap, I am closer to collapsing.
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2018
honor: “you stumble where gods get lost”

honor,

still the tattoo being drawn on my senses,
unresolved and demanding
solution or surrender,
acknowledging, that I am not poet enough

tho y’all keep diverting me with poem commissions,
half started but will freezer keep until Jacob’s angel and I
have wrestled this honor notion to the ground for good,
which means once and forever

Patti’s words distinctly heard:
“you stumble where gods get lost”
and that’s what the poetry is for,
to word wrestle until the resolution revelation shines
and someone cries out uncle, father, son, are we not all
samed and shamed when we wrestle with honor


will you know honor when it presents itself?

a man keeps his word and another honors them both
with a monthly sum that says friendship is a promise kept

a father texts to a son in trouble “got your back” that elicits
a return verse of “I love you;”. that’s love, not honor cause someone remembers their immigrant father’s hell going slowly by and this poem and that memory revived, that’s honor

(******* tears on my phone screen, a ****** pain @6:53am
on sabbath morn; no body invited the interlopers;  not me anyway)

honor is not a parade or not the kind on my mind today: the honor that gets you medaled that’s all about brotherhood,
that’s a different kind of honor I understand but not what I’m
about right wright write now

looking for small acts, small doses, nearly invisible to the naked
eye, indeed, ya need a scrunched up squint to detect the honor that I need so desperately seek to theorem proof that,
even I got some

one of you wrote me, I am nothing.
one of you wrote me,
that they are all busted up on the boulevard of broken dreams.

trusting a stranger thru his crazier poems with depreciation and overwhelming sadnesses,
is that honor?

my rsvp (how could I not), is that honor?

honor sought in the small necessities which are more important than small kindnesses wrought from love: those come easy natural

necessary necessity, the word itself bleeds pressure on the soul; but i don’t mean paying your bills, burying your parents and such stuff;


honor is in the unnecessary:  where actions defeat uncertainty, honor is stepping up when no one calls out need

honor is the first step the hand extended and the concomitant
electric shock that traverses two hands in a shake that obviates
unnecessary words
like thank you

which why gods stumble, get lost, they only get praise conferred
but honor belongs only to us humans,
to give honor.
that’s power gods don’t got,
why they oft get lost

so thank you for staying with me this far,
you honor me by listening to an old man
seizing up when his mind asks him direct

did you live with honor,
and tho the summing up s’ain’t over,
(lol laughing, at the ain’t autocorrect),
at least now I know what to count,
what counts,
doing the unnecessary unasked
in small ways, a quieter doing good,
honor needs two and starts when you say hey
hey you...


*7:36am Saturnday  2+10+18
Shabbat Shekalim
writ without disguise
Connor Ruther  Aug 2010
Underdog
Connor Ruther Aug 2010
Watching life’s play,
From the nosebleed section.
If I die today,
It’s natural selection.

I hear what people say,
But don’t make the connection,
The past fades away,
To a vague recollection.

99 problems,
No retorts or solutions,
Trying to pay my bills,
Without resorting to prostitution.

Losing is a life lesson,
Hard to learn,
It’s a truth I mention,
In no uncertain terms.

They say if you get knocked down,
Get back up,
But sometimes when I’m knocked out,
I’ve had enough.

My drive and ambition,
Is out of gas,
But I’m stuck in my position,
Can’t change the past.

They said, “It’s okay chum,
There’s a future to make.”
But no, it’s okay son,
I choose not to partake.

I’m on the road of life,
Just taking a jog,
But I can’t run right,
Cause I’m an underdog.



I know I’m not perfect,
I’ve made mistakes,
But I really do deserve it,
So give me a break.

Girlfriend told me,
I’d never succeed.
I choked at her,
Cause I forgot to breathe.

I was told to walk,
Off the beaten track,
I talk one step forward,
Then whisper two steps back.

I’ve been made a fool,
I’ve played the clown,
I never broke the rules,
But I still broke down.

When I look in the mirror,
To examine my features,
It brakes when brought nearer,
So I pick up the pieces.

You know I don’t deal,
In self depreciation,
So what you find here,
Is honest estimation.

I’m not clever as Copernicus,
Or strong as King Kong,
Even when you’re learning this,
You knew it all along.

I’m on the road of life,
Drifting through the fog,
But I can’t see tonight,
Cause I’m an underdog.
Andrew Parker May 2014
Condolence Cards Poem (Spoken Word)
5/19/2014

Congratulations: On landing your dream job!
Congratulations: On buying your first house!
Congratulations: It's a beautiful baby you brought into this world!
Congratulations: Marriage is so monumental, see you at the wedding!
Condolences.

Can you measure the amount of acknowledgements we forfeit,
to cheap card stock and cheesy colorful cutouts?  
Like each event in life is a round in sports,
requiring an announcer to stand on the edge of the arena,
shouting the play by play.  

We play pretend that cards can say what we feel.  
But I feel like unless if those purple, blue, vanilla,
or pink for valentine's and mother's day envelopes
can enclose an entire paperback novel,
I know that my feelings can't possibly be enclosed inside.  
As if feelings could surmount to anything less than a lifetime of experience.  

For when has then phrase, "I love you" ever conveyed the entire message intended, but without the soft gestures accompanying it, or perhaps the longing gaze of eyes and 'I Do's' entrenched in one another.  
For when has the phrase, "I miss you" offered up the subtleties of staring out your window on rainy day, listening to piano symphonies sinking into the sofa sipping away sorrows on wine?
For when has the phrase, "I am sorry for your loss" ever actually meant sorry, as if it was you who were the perpetrator of a ****** and were seeking exoneration through a sorry excuse of a phrase uttered by people who just don't quite understand the meaning of the term 'sorry.'
Condolences.

I stare at the Hallmark Sea in front of me and I wonder.  Are life's memorable moments so easily categorized?  Into baby showers, bar-mitzvahs, and birthdays?
What about cards just for barbecues with random neighbors?
About cards just for breaking your precious vase?
Cards just for being a ***** the other day?
Just for breakfast you made me in bed?
For binge-ing on alcohol with me and not leaving me almost dead?
What about cards just for thanking you for buying me a stupid ******* card?

Tell me where is the corporate branding on cards for being broke?
On cards for broken homes?
On cards for being homeless?
On cards for getting cancer?
On cards for cutting?
On cards for self-loathing and depreciation?
What about cards for being in the moment or sharing a cup of coffee?
Instead what we get is the catch-all, Condolence Cards.

Condolences - an expression of sympathy with a person who is suffering sorrow, misfortune, or grief.  
Condolences - an expression of sympathy with a person who is suffering sorrow, misfortune, or grief.  
Condolences - an expression of sympathy
Condolences - a person who is suffering
Condolences - sorrow, misfortune, or grief.  


I didn't realize most people's sympathy being expressed equated to blank stares like paper on paper, means nothing but thin and flimsy papers, feelings forfeited, grounded up like big beautiful trees teeming with life, chalked up into tiny pieces of toilet paper for you to wipe your crap on, leaving behind a Hallmark - Condolence Card.
Like machinery with use,
Life by time depreciates
Towards eternity.
Why the ****
is seemingly everyone
so ******* slutty?

What the **** happened
to maintenance
of Integrity?

******
for the right words
or for the right look
or the right price
or the right Music
or the right *****;
the most important motivation to many
seems to be Instant ******* Gratification:

Please.
Such folly is childish:

Males and Females alike
seem to be equally Hedonistic
and selfishly manipulative:

What dissolute, reckless, selfish
Depravity of Sanctity
hath seized our Minds
with such wrathful, gluttonous, vain, lustful, and self-destructive
Epicureanism?

It seems to me
a Mind of Displeasure
recklessly seeks Indulgence,
and thus encounters overindulgence,
which then leads to overstimulation,
which in turn leads to depreciation,
which then manifests itself
as Debauchery.

Reputation
precedes you;
it follows you
as your social Wake;

Reputation
is the Name
for the Ripples
cast by One's actions;

Sometimes it is mere gossip,
rooted in vile, childish Spite;

but most times,
it seems karmic as ****.
This write is supposed to be highly General; a commentary on our Mentality,
so if you think this is about you, maybe you should reevaluate your Ethics;
or perhaps we simply disagree, which is totally fine with me,
so long as I can express it honestly.

That said, it probably sounds more angry and accusatory that it really is,
it's just a train of Thought that keeps parading around in my head
that I wanted to get out in some healthy way, so I wrote it,
and I thought it worth sharing. :)
Oliver Philip Nov 2018
Are you a victim of your time , must you live
       With your mistakes, and suffer ?
Really it’s time we wake up n smell the coffee
Every problem has solution,so let’s start today

You need not to put it off or procrastinate .
Oh I know it’s easy said , so best get o’t a bed
Unless you ever wish to live with a mistake

And identify the faults, without delay.

Verify with me , in the best way to identify
In a poetic form an A to Z of your mistakes.
Can I start with A the abandonment
The abandonment of self-surrendering
I next target B for Bacchanalia nights
Melancholic days getting over a hangover

On to The Cacodemon of an evil spirit
Found in our home , a most malignant person

Yes and Depreciation of the value of our
        assets usually by the Bankers we trusted.
Oh to have the benefits of fiscal hindsight
Understanding E as extenuating circumstance
Reason then becomes the excuse for failure.

Together with F the F word so commonly used
In emphasis to any topic or discussions
Migrating to G , not mistaking God or life alone
Ethereal spirits surround us n help us choose

Methodically H the mistake that you made
Unwittingly you ignore Holy Spirit of God
Sympathetically I now carry the spirit with me
The change to my life is now monumental.

Yes up to J for the justice that you mistake
On the times when you are it’s sad victim.
Understandably K for Karma of getting out of

Life , whatever you put in.You are punished too
In reaching L for Life. Well the mistake is plain
Virtually you spend a lifetime getting to grips
Engage with M for the mistakes you made

With each one made , don’t cry , learn from it.
In a section for N then note daily five blessings
That you have , it is a mistake not to care.
Having an Opinion is fine but it’s a big mistake

Yes to be opinionated or dogmatic with others
O is followed by P for Procrastination of time
Uselessness , putting off what’s needed today
Reaching the Q the queue that you got into

Mistakenly got into as more haste less speed
Indicative of R for recapitulation of all mistakes
Some simple and some massive and correct
To sequester an S for sententiousness
And pompous moralising must be avoided
Knowing the T of toutological mistakes
Even though it looks good in a poetry scan
So to the U. For understanding when a mistake

And a small mistake can have repercussions
Now to  Virtually every mistake has a price
Do you admit to it and face the consequences

Simplicity of the W to weather to own up
Unless you admit it and show grace n humility
Fortunately the Xanadu is not achieved now
For all the mistakes made have a huge price.
Eventually the Y n Z. Are the yardstick to
Reluctantly measure your path on to Zion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written by Philip.
November 28th 2018.
Are you a victim of your time, must you live with your mistakes and suffer ?
Homunculus  Oct 2014
Venom
Homunculus Oct 2014
Venom so vile, and inveterate drips,
Into the pits of our souls,  
Our benevolence slips, and
We grow cold in our minds, as
Resentment grips,
Because distress is the drug, and  
We gotta get our fix, so

We turn on the television,  
Staring blankly at the news, and
We hear how a man shot another,
For a scuff on his shoes, and

Our heads start to tingle, and
Our minds start to race,
Bathing in that horrid glory
Of our ultimate distaste, but

I'll divulge with you a secret,
We indulge it, and we keep it
Cause we love the panoramic view,
Of all the shame and the disgrace
We just wanna chastise, vilify, and hate
Everything is beautiful,
As long as we're irate, and
Everything's alright, when
We've got something to fight,

A fine line indistinct
Between disgust, and delight
An ethics, of immorality,
Whose only function's to
Perpetuate this ****** war machine's
Supposed immortality

We've got a war on drugs, war on crime,
Wars on poverty and terror, with our
Warning level stuck on orange,
Drones flying through the air,
Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and
Shamelessly, we dropped so many
Bombs upon Afghanistan

Compassion has become a pipe dream, and
I believe to some it might seem
Relatively clear, that we're
Addicted to the fear,
Like a ****** with a needle,
It is what we now hold dear,
Fear of guns, rejection, pain and crime,  
Fear of the unknown,

Maybe that's why we so persistently
Preserve the status quo, and
Rest with such insistence, deep
Within our comfort zones, but
Treading unfamiliar waters is how
We have always grown, yet

We can't swallow this fear, instead
We wallow in our tears, inside
This dark shadow cast across
The stark meadow,
Of concrete desolation, forged by
The greed of modern man, and
We can't even acknowledge it,
Though deep inside, we understand,

We know we can't sustain,
Our selfish ways like this forever, and
Soon we'll see the tree is fruitless,
In this ruthless endeavor,

One must wonder, however,
If it will come to a stop,
Only in the mushroom clouds,
When the last body drops, or

Can we take the strides,
To truly turn the tides?
To stop the fight, and then unite?
To voice dissent, and then repent?
To break free from our government's
Corruption, destruction, and
Obstruction of justice
We vote these people into office!
How is it that we trust this?

They're planting seeds of corporate greed,
With hyper rich evading taxes,
They live as kings, as the inner springs
Are poking from your mattress,

They facilitate depreciation of,
The education system, 'cause,
They know that you won't retaliate,
While lacking in real wisdom,

They take from you your right to know,
They build your mind a prison, but
You're partially complicit,
In the consent you have given,

Stop this **** procrastination!
Stop this social *******!
The truth must be awakened now, and
Action must be taken,

The time has passed for watching idly,
Sitting by, and being patient, so
Brothers, sisters, time has come.
With vigor, we must hasten!
Anil Prasad Nov 2016
Birds sing and fly
Flowers smile
Rivers flow
Mountains invite
Rainbows bend in
Seven colours
Sunset and sunrise
Do not amaze us
With their beauty
Their beauty
We do not care
With them we cannot pair
We do not have time
To stand and stare
At them to feel
And heal our broken selves
We catch them
In our cameras mechanically
Showing off our taste
In a haste lest the time
Should pass between
Our fingers stealthily!

We are busy fighting
Over a dead carcass
We use all our might
To prove our commonness!

While Nature laughs at
The grotesqueness of humanity
Its song, fragrance, breathtaking heights,
Soothing colours that might bring sanity
Are squandered and drowned in the rites
Of violence engraving epitaphs at
The doors of suffering humanity!

— The End —