Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Emanuel Martinez Mar 2014
The revolution will not take place in McDonald’s
Born out of lethargic, flaky or fickle bodies

Words and actions, powerful ammunitions
But vessels, our bodies, control those manifestations
An armament, the body
Matter without which revolution cannot happen

Us who struggle, while we waste away
Those invested in maintaining power and privilege
Don’t only safeguard their money
They protect their bodies too
And only that of the offspring
Invested in perpetuating power and privilege

They not only monopolize learning and leadership
As mechanisms of dominance and control
They run and eat to fuel that constant fight

Man, wealthy or poor
May give into the vise of fast food and intoxication
But those invested in control
Conscious of power and privilege are no fools
Fortified not only by lawyers and henchmen
But by doctors, fitness trainers, fresh harvests
Having the choice and access to fresh produce

Us colored children from the hoods, the barrios
Our moms, or dads, or single parents
Working month to month
Frustrated because we don't eat fruit and vegetables
Instead eating frozen, canned, chemically enhanced
Microwaveable dinners and junk foods

Skinny, chubby, or obese
Eating our twinkies, doritos, and coke
Can’t even run a block without running out of breath
Diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol, asthma, obesity
Not even looming in the back of our minds

We need youth to represent our communities
We need youth to fight for our communities
We need youth whose minds and stomachs are filled
Not with fodder and capitalist waste
But with food, ideas that fill them, fuel them
Not out of a temporary desire for satisfaction
Rather a prolonged political exercise to fortify themselves
As agents of a transformative process in the world

Frozen, canned, chemically enhanced lunches at school
Soda fountains, fried food, fast food, junk food
May always be subsidized, marketed, made affordable
To be part of your breakfast, lunch and or dinner

Still never reject an apple, orange or pear
Those with power and privilege
May not even have to think about
Their regimented diets
With endless fruits available to them

But for us, a single fruit made available to us
Has to be a daily reminder
An act of defiance
To chose to strengthen our bodies with it

A slippage of those invested in our chains
When the owners of industry
Have socialized us to think
Coca cola, pizza, and burgers
Are parts of our cultural identity
A modern industrialized upgrade
Our diet decisions driven by capitalist consumerism

There may be no specialized fitness trainers
Expensive equipment
Lush parks, jogging tracks, bicycle lanes, or bicycles
In our neighborhoods
But there is a space right next to your bed
Or a piece of floor where you live
And you have your body
Just do a few jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups

You need to have the patience and love
To protect and fortify not only your mind
But your body
To know that the more you fortify yourself
The more you are going to be able to fight exploitation
The more you are going to protect and fight
The ones you love, and even the ones
You won’t even realize you have saved as a result

We may not always have the access to healthy food
But we have the choice to request it collectively
In educational spaces and to take the initiative to exercise
March 25, 2014
mw  Nov 2016
chicken nuggets
mw Nov 2016
two days
before we loaded the car
with what seemed like the entirety
of my heart and belongings
to move me across the state to attend college,
my baby brother found me on the kitchen floor,
crying
about the microwave.

well,
not just the microwave.
he found me in a crumpled up heap,
sobbing that this day
would be the last i had
to microwave things
in
this
particular
microwave.

i couldn’t justify my lament then.
my dad chalked it up to ***,
my brother called me a drama queen,
and my mom told me i needed to eat less microwaveable things.
but i think i might’ve figured it out now.

five months later.

y’see, i grew up an ARMY brat.
attended five different elementary schools,
two separate middle schools,
one high school,
and two colleges.
i was never good at saying goodbye,
but i’m a pro at walking away.

i found out quickly
that while the faces and names
of my friends and classmates
change from state to state,
the character tropes
stay basically the same.
people and places become such replaceable things.

i worry,
a lot,
about being a replaceable thing.

there are talented people in this world.
people that can divine the past and future
from coffee grounds and tea leaves.
but can anyone here tell me what kinds of awful things my footsteps say about me?
there are boot marks,
with my name on them,
in places i know i should never have been.
and clumps of dirt stuck to my heels
that have been with me longer than some friends have.

i sat on the floor last night
while my love explained physics to me.
he told me
that gravity is a constant force,
and of course,
the earth’s gravity affects each and every one of us.

but our individual gravity affects the earth as well.
according to newton’s third law,
the earth pulls of me
with the same force that i pull on the earth.
my mass disrupts space time.*
carl sagan once told me
through the clarifying prism of the television screen,
that we are all stardust,
collapsed suns
and black matter.
we belong to no place.
i belong to no place.

i belong to no place.

i don’t cry about the microwave anymore,
i don’t waste my tears on saying goodbye.
i know that every thing and every one has their time,
and sometimes that time is brief.
it’s a hard pill to swallow,
ultimately my favorite self descriptor is ‘infallible’.
but somedays, i fall
just to stand up and see:

the sun *still
rises,
the earth still turns,
the microwave still makes bomb-*** chicken nuggets,

and i am still here.
old ****
r Mar 2017
He creates alternative facts
for no good reason
just to be an ***
what the hell for
don't ask me
he thinks someone is listening
to everything he has to say
all the lies he tells
taking pictures of himself
through the microwave
lying through his teeth
about his taxes
throwing mirrors at stones
shattering the truth
roaming his labyrinth
fiddling with his ******
while Rome burns
with little hands all a twitter
making up political speeches
while sitting on the *******
and spitting on the floor
writing surrealist poetry
on the walls and calling
them executive orders.
:)
JR Rhine Mar 2016
Dontcha just hate trying to finish a poem?
It's always like there could be just a hint of this, a dash of that;
too much seasoning, not enough time spent simmering;
did you use the right amount of ingredients;
was it tablespoons or teaspoons?

Dontcha wish you could just pluck one out of the freezer:
One wrapped up in a neat little package?
Leaving it on the stove-top to thaw a little,
before heating it up at your timely convenience?

I wish I knew when these **** things were done;
Wish I could stick em in a microwave, clock in the allotted time for a work like that to be well-cooked and consumable--
Wait around zoning out to the droning tone of the toasting note,
then awake from my spell by the sweet dinging of completion.

I'd take that steamy sucker out of that commodious kiln
in such great haste I can barely hold it in my hands!
"Boy oh boy does this one look tasty!"

I'd sit down with my necessary utensils and have a go at it, chewing thoughtfully and enjoying this wonderful piece I have prepared by myself for myself--and without all the hassle and wasted time
spent slaving over books and pages and pens and inspirations!

But ****;
Nobody likes poems cooked out of pre-made packages;
they're a little too rubbery, a little too mushy, a little too bland--
and worse off they were made by the assemblyman's hand! (or claw).

Nobody likes their poems coming out of pre-made packages;
They ain't nothing like the real thing.
Alice Butler Nov 2013
There's a funny sort of emptiness
that passes over me
as I walk past the paperback erotica that tuck themselves away
in the shelves of the local grocery store in places that are
simultaneously completely out in the open yet completely ignored
looking, as I do, with mock casual interest
and unfeigned disdain.
Who are these intended for, really?
Are they for the snuggly-wuggly, *****, cozy-woozy, wishy-washy and warm family of four
comparing chicken nugget prices and
weighing the health benefits of
vegetable medley versus succotash?
Or are they for the uni flatmates
walking huddled together for warmth or protection or both,
seeing as they're wearing only sandals and denim shorts
and this is the first time
they've been grocery shopping without mum,
that giggle loudly together to mask how homesick they really are
while they compare the calories in
Campbell's versus Progresso.
They went with Progresso if you were wondering.
Or are they meant for those who are cooking for one?
For those who have no need to compare prices
or calories
out loud.
For those who are well acquainted
with the old, familiar tiled aisles
as they have no one to take out to dinner.
Is this where they are to find company?
Betwixt the pages of a badly penned,
lighter than marshmallows,
more shallow than the kiddie pool,
more transparent than Casper,
not-good-enough-to-be-******-compost
"literary" garbage?
Is this -assumed- female
supposed to curl up with one of these slabs of drivel
and feel **** and aroused
in her baggy sweats and ill-fitting hoodie
after she ate a microwaveable chicken *** pie all by her lonesome?
As a single girl who often cooks for one,
I am offended by this.
Personally,
I think Lestat is ten times sexier than Edward,
Salai is way cuter than Fabio,
and Christian Grey couldn't S Mr. Rochester's D.
What I'm saying is-
Grocery Stores.
YOU are the primary reason for this pathetic f-ckery.
Everything else in the store can be compared for quality.
So why not apply that same knowledge
to the book arena.
Signed,
A Concerned Shopper
p.s. Please extend the validity date on the chicken *** pie coupon. Thank you!
Seriously considering sending this to my local grocery store.
PJ Poesy  Dec 2015
Countdown On
PJ Poesy Dec 2015
As molecules of cellophane and plastic plate mix with cheesy mire of microwaveable dinner, I make excuse in my mind and apologize to my already over-compromised liver. It's simpler this way, or at least excusable for this moment. 56 dead in Garland, Texas, I think I can be thankful a tornado has not turned my world upside down, whilst biting down on tv dinner rations. Still I think, can 2015 end any faster? These last few days counting down and the microwave's digital display bleeping, sludge discriminating who shall be taken. It's all so guarded and circumspect. Please, if there be an element of good, may the new year know it.
It's been a rough one.
Aaron Bray  Sep 2013
4am dinner.
Aaron Bray Sep 2013
i made microwaveable noodles
they burnt my hand
i sent them to the floor
my stomach growls in pain
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2016
~

Keep It Simple Stupid ("Your Poems Are Too **** Long")

~ for Natty~

white sheet of foolscap,
imploring the fool's fingers,
natty. natty, just this once,
be the simpleton dunce,
spend but a modest pence,
cap the blowout verbiage well

pretend
being a short and sweet poet beat^,
leaving those blue line requests
more white than black,
emptier and thus,
more silently, fuller, and powerful,

build  each line from a few hard crafted,
forged-wrought-iron syllables,
say the more in the
unsaid unwritten

snap your fingers in clapping praise,^
kiss the words bye-bye slow and single,
hold back the overfilling raucous reprises,
those stanza'd motley muddled crew,
de-access all excesses,
a manly, word squad^^^,
no more,
the shaft to success
be a David slingshot of single pebbles

but herein have,
prior blessed and true confessed:

"for I know there is soul in brevity,
but that ain't exactly my finest quality"


this is a "not know how to,"
for when I plunder the sea deep of a
single and singular
first and foremost# kiss,
still forever kept,
and that cylindrical memory volume so full,
one must seek and speak,
many verbal Ceylonese herbal tea toasts,
for the drunken 'n blinder I become,
the greater the need,
the lesser to please,
commissioning the poet to sing of his
long odyssey home,
of even the briefest venture ventured,
a combo of triumph and escaped,
wrapped in a single word,
his every feathery eye retention plucked,
a bald bird to be fully consumed,
even the bones, committed to
paper memory...

what the heck,
you want a speck,
a "say hey kid"^^ haiku,
a shorty hearty 60 second sophomoric Campbell soupy blessing,
microwaveable, heated but not hot,
radiated but not cooked

woe is me,
cannot be denied,
why use a pithy when
for pity's sake,
thrice won't suffice?

the woman, the observer
punches me with a solitary and indelicate,
as her wont, as her want,
"just-this-once"
telling the blowhard to not spout

this prideful pain,
deep water drilled in the muscled fortress of my rocky biceps,
eliciting  an outsized
"ouch, that really hurt,"
and my spouting retort...

~

by this bruised blotch, this redsome refrain,
dulcet sung in black and blue, a sonnet's colored quatrain,
by your flesh's mark, thee I join, in places where no mark dare
reflect our secreted touch, witness-protected by our guardian eyes only...*


**** it.
4/25/16 08:00pm

^in a particular club in the West Village in the 50's,  the beat poets congregated, there was a shared shaft-way with local Italian families.  The club owner instructed them to snap their fingers instead of clapping, otherwise garbage would come down the shaft when applause sounded.  Hence finger snapping became associated with coolness.

^^ The Say Hey Kid was Willie Mays

^^^a squad is composed of 9 to 13 men

# http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1518614/f-f-1stmost/
Alienpoet Dec 2019
Sitting in your old arm chair,
With a devil may care,
Attitude.
Talking about the ingratitude
Of youth.
Watching TV,
Eating microwaveable meals,
Grumpa,
I still love you,
I remember the times when I was young,
and you helped me,
when I was stung,
by a wasp,
or fell over.
Life is hard,
it makes you,
grumpy and
lonely,
Please think of the things you’ve shown me,
Rather than talking about the things that make you despair
I know behind the passive aggression you still care,
I know I sometimes take the ****,
But really Grumpa,
I can see all your tricks,
There is still, to my surprise,
magic behind those eyes,
And bedtime stories waiting to be read.
Grumpa,
Don’t lose the thread
We all need a grandfather like you,
For you have all the experience,
You will know what to do!
She took a bottle of whiskey
and began to chug it
the whiskey turned to water
smooth to the throat, tasteless
reaching for the cigarette lighter
in her back pocket and grabbing the cigarettes
from the table, a single puff.....

She took a plate, a fork, and a knife
from the kitchen and inside her freezer
was a microwaveable dinner,
she stumbled to the living room

The TV was static,  
muffled cries from the screen    
the meal was crunchy, hardly chewy
a single bite....

The radio was static
yet audible, one station, love songs
mascara tubes, empty, lipstick, dry
and face, bare....

Toothpaste, crusty and soap, dry
brown water and bare skin
tender flesh and wool rag

Tattered clothes, black lips
empty chamber, a pistol
cigarette, a single puff

— The End —