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Julie Grenness Nov 2015
A long, long time ago, I can still remember when,
Junk food made me smile,
And I knew if had my chance,
That I could make my fatness dance,
And maybe I was happy for a while.

But McDonald's made me shiver,
With every burger they'd deliver,
Bad news on their doorstep,
I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried,
When  I passed size twenty-five,
But something touched me deep inside,
The day I knocked back obesity fries,
CHORUS.
So, bye, bye McDonald's French fries,
Drove my  chevy away from McDonald's,
didn't have a bevy,
I said goodbye to whiskey and rye,
Singing no more apple pies,
That's the end of obesity fries.....

Did you  go to McDonald's biomes?
Did you know you're  changing your genomes?
Eating all those pesticides?
Now do believe they love you, guys?
Might as well eat dead flies!
And can you change evolution in real time?

Well, I know you're addicted to them,
You'll need more than treadmills in the gym,
Now can't even put on your shoes,
Man, you'll dig the obesity blues,

CHORUS.

I was an obese teenage bronco buck.
Driving to McDonald's in a pickup truck,
But I knew I was out of luck,
The day I ate landfill in those French fries...

I started singing bye, bye obesity fries,
Drove my chevy, had no bevies,
And the burgers were dry,
This is the day I knock back French fries.

CHORUS.
I met a girl who sang the blues,
She'd passed turning size twenty-two,
I asked her if she ate junk food too,
She just smiled and drove away,
I drove down to the store no more,
Where I ate additives years before,
But the junk food store didn't care anyway...

CHORUS
CHORUS....
You wait till you get old! Obesity looms. (not really, I have lost 31 kg. )
Tryst Sep 2015
What Hope Remained?

What hope remained when hope for hope was spent?
        When putrid plumes dulled morning into night
        Hope lived in heart-struck deeds of bold intent,
        As mortals wept and earthborn angels went
        With downcast eyes to clamber heavens height.

What hope remained when hope for hope was spent?
        When panicked sirens wailed a lost lament
        And backs were bowed beneath ungodly weight,
        Hope lived in heart-struck deeds of bold intent
        As boots bore souls up treadmills burnt and bent
        To scale a void devoid of dawning light.

What hope remained when hope for hope was spent?
        For those in sight of angels heaven sent
        Atop the world to aid their mortal plight,
        Hope lived in heart-struck deeds of bold intent.

        When wingless brethren conquered feared ascent
        To gift last hope to all who saw their might:

                What hope remained when hope for hope was spent?
                Hope lived in heart-struck deeds of bold intent.



In The Fall

I chanced upon a stranger in the fall,
Cosmetic garb of office black and white
Portraying calm demeanor of his plight
As shadows panicked on a stricken wall,

And oft' I find my mind in numb recall
To look upon that helpless human kite
Who tumbled from the terrors of a height,
Yet graceful as an eagle in a stall

Before it plummets earthward --   'Neath the pall
Of twisted steel rended by follied flight,
That stranger lives forever in the light
Suspended in iconic timeless sprawl.

        I wonder, in the briefness of his fall,
        Did he derive the meaning of it all?
What Hope Remained: In memory of the three hundred and forty three firefighters of FDNY that fell on Tuesday 11th September 2001, who fought without hope to bring hope to the lost.

In The Fall: Dedicated to "The Falling Man" of Tuesday September 11th 2001, in memory of him and those like him who chose the manner of their own end, when the only choice on that day of days was how, not if or when.
Cyril Blythe Aug 2012
I gulp down an Energy-Booster-X,
blue and sour.
Siri turns on Radiohead,
15 Step.

I step up to the pyramid of treadmills,
bouncing and salty.
Surrounded by Greek gods,
Beta, Alpha Gam, Pike.

I motivate myself by my surroundings,
bulging and ****.
Cardio first and then core,
2 miles, 200 crunches.

I connect my sweat in a line down my shirt,
blotchy and stagnant.
Everyone stretches in the end,
Thighs, biceps, pecs aflame.

I will not stop until I am perfection,
beautiful and sculpted.
Alarm set again,
For 6:30am, 7:30pm
Anneke  Nov 2014
Treadmills
Anneke Nov 2014
I can change
the speeds,
but I will always increase
in time and distance.

A seemingly endless
track of rubber
energized by electricity,
worn out by the steps
I and those before me
have already made,

But I can choose
to get off
and stop.


I just haven't decided
how or when
I will get off.
Mike H  Oct 2012
Aberdeen morning
Mike H Oct 2012
I walk down to the quayside,
past the Pure Gym fitness centre's
plate glass window.
There is a phalanx of treadmills
facing the glass,
populated by women
running nowhere,
an image of futility,
trapped like flies at a window,
determined and doomed.

The fitness centre looks out
at the huge boats
that work North Sea
between the oil fields and the fishing grounds:

The Olympic Commander,
Normand Aurora,
Skandi Caledonia,
Helliar.

On the high decks,
men in yellow oilskins
lean over the ship rail
and watch the women run.

For a moment I stand
between them, the earnest women,
the wistful men,
feeling for both but belonging with neither.

The sun is low in the sky,
and there's an Arctic bite
to the wind.
I pull up my collar,
and hurry into veins
of the granite city.
ri  May 2016
green grass
ri May 2016
they say the grass grows greener on the other side
but I've been watering myself down day after day
counting calories, running on treadmills for hours,
you know it seems like the only thing I could eat without feeling guilty about myself is a small bowl of nothing
but even that would be too much.
and when I do eat, I eat so much that I'm too full to go on with the day
but that fullness can't fill up the empty void in my head that's supposed to be telling me to love myself
because how can I love myself when the only thing that's ever loved me was a hot pocket in the freezer
and how can I love myself when my dad says people who hurt themselves are crazy but then saw my scars and didn't apologize
and how could I love myself when I was the age of 16, the woman who gave birth to me told me depression is just a phase
and how can I love myself when the first boy I ever loved told me the only way to chase after his heart would have to be on a treadmill
and how am I supposed to love myself when people think that not eating all day is an accomplishment
but who knows maybe the grass is greener on the other side after all
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
i've been to kenya, all that these "charity" adverts are fuelling
is ignorance, they're presupposing
all the african nations are like kindergarten,
they're insulating them... it's like that:
give a man fish or give him a fishing rod,
i.e.: give a man money or give him a
method creating & subsequently circulating wealth:
these charitable companies are insulting
african nations to be at a loss,
they're only feeding european bureaucrats
who are really the only worthwhile
charitable pay-cheque givens, odds 4-5.*

a retired lady selling poppies
for a feeling
committed suicide
being hunted by ninety-nine
charity organisations...
charity organisations...
start-ups akin to apps of
cue: shaved face, young, eager
****** venom ****** statues
of jealousy...
all the bankers' wives have
a tier system, the origin of
charity companies
(surely a wife can't be as pristine
as her husband):
first two don't count,
third: modern art "collector",
fifth: philanthropist,
seventh: possessor of an O.B.E.
and as one bemused englishman said:
king arthur and the zimmerframe table
of knights with walking sticks rather than swords:
money made people lazy, less adventurous,
let alone less tribal and communist,
adventure just became predictable,
tourism...
the modern shopper is envious of
the hunter gatherer... so envious
he wants to look the part, but live as modern
lazy allows... after all... all the gym sessions
can't go to waste... got to run standing still:
hey! don quixote! leave the windmills!
check out the treadmills... you see a caveman
anywhere in the sweaty parlours?
i don't.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
i'm just a body reduced to talking about
treadmills and counting calories,
i might as well be a budgie trapped
in a birdcage running the motion of carrying
forward a mile, yet standing still...
the famous 1980s angst against being schooled
is gone with joy division and the smiths,
i'm into placebo's cover version of bigmouth strikes
again anyway... seriously, i'm like a modern
day don quixote, but instead of windmills
i'm facing adversaries that are on treadmills:
keep it up and they'll turn you into hamsters
powering the whole ****** gym,
or that's what you should be doing,
don't get me wrong, i used to pump iron
on the weights for ***-appeal... **** me did that
prove to be a farce: bulimia didn't feel roman
empire rite of passage enough;
but i'll admit, squash is a funnier version of tennis,
it's like two people playing a one-man game
of hitting a ball against the wall.*

darwinism isn't really an existential
anaesthetic, it's like a cancer
given the body is a history,
thanks to darwinism we're all
berry foragers in a forest of
whims and pampering of exacting circa;
i just loathe this objectivity
of cool being implanted in me:
so why would i pre-date cloning
with analogous generics of feeling
to make me into a bog-standard mr. smith?!
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
sure, the romance, they are the new gods,
     Paris, Rome, Barcelona (don't ask me about Madrid,
                                                       too royal),
a Venetian mask i would don, and become the quixote fighting treadmills rather than windmills -
although to Rome i have not walked
                for my footsteps to encounter the pave,
but in the Venetian pirate lair, plunderers of Byzantium
i have set foot on, at the same time to have learned
of the number 613 near a synagogue and heard the shofar.
Paris (not the Trojan) is the cliche synonym of Eros -
elsewhere Gemini: St. Petersburg as the Amsterdam
   of the north, and Edinburgh as the Athens of the north.

well, such a verse does indeed desire
                                                 more translation of Horace,
as in nimis ex vos, sed non satis ex "ego",
  yes, "ego" the abstract component of you that's
free from the three tier psychoanalytical *******,
what superego, what id? forget it! there's only you
and only "you" - work with me:
               too much out of you, but not enough
               from your alter (synonym of "ego" -
               Jungian shadow porridge);
but as promised, yet more Horace

               deus inmortalis haberi dum cupit Empedocles
               ardentem frigidus Aetnam insiluit.
               sit ius liceatque perire poetis:
               invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.
               nec semel hoc fecit nec, si retractus erit,
               iam fiet **** et ponet famosae mortis
               amorem. nec satis adparet, cur versus factitet,
               utrum minxerit in patrios cineres an triste
               bidental moverit incestus: certe furit ac velut
               ursus, obiectos caveae valuit si frangere clatros,
               indoctum doctumque fugat recitator
               acerbus; quem vero arripuit, tenet occiditque
               legendo, non misura cutem nisi plena
               cruoris hirudo.


but of course i'll translate, but prior in dogmatic proposals...
keep the book of revelation of the Ιωαννης,
discard the rest... the four primers are a parody of
the tetragrammaton - so gentle in his own land
yet such a vicious serpent in Egypt? which one's the fraud?
messiah of just hanging, standing still,
40 years in the desert or 40 hours on the cross?
and all that iconoclasm and modern too via narcissism?
"bring out the selfie shtick! oh wait... my hands are
nailed to a ******* crux!" and this persistent 2000 year old
negation - and being spared, the Romans, or
rather the alphabetum, Roma est mort but you
can still ask the italians of a cappuccino - Chino and
Khaki elsewhere with the Lombardy League ponce
rubbing shoulders with Saxons... Chino Versace
whistle at a Bella... you can still see c b g long after
and the coliseum in ruins... it wasn't swallowed up!
i too though the second H in the tetragrammaton was
intended as a déjà vu - it would sit perfectly with
anti-, the concept, but not the man as such,
and indeed the Y would make a perfect tree of Golgotha
in that tweaked geometric, then W and seas
and continuance - Roma alphabetum, sole constructor
of computer robot? maybe... but you see, the H
is a slippery *****, it's silent, like in Khaki... or
as is the usual case in Hindu - Dhal... it's not so much
déjà vu but silence - a necessary surd to make spelling
pretty... dyslexics think spelling is a bit like arithmetic...
it's actually an aesthetic, but they do find it as hard as
arithmetic, and that's why they're genius at numbers...
but the aesthetics is missing, so they cling to numbers
and the aesthetic is missing, and everything associated
with money... well, it's a bit ugly, isn't it?

... (postponed translation)... yes, London is Hades...
    doom and gloom.

but indeed the Gemini in the tetragrammaton,
but first the principle of three-dimensional space (Y) -
just look into one of the corners of a cube (yes
the room you're sitting in),
and lastly the principle of waves, whichever,
sine or cosine as you will, looks better that way
than mediating the ad infinitum of 1, 2, 3 etc.,
sea and constant fluxes (fluctuations),
pin-point the opposite, the principle of one-dimensional
space (a definite coordinate, rather than three-dimensional
space and that ****** indefinite coordinate) and
subsequent ripples, which aren't necessarily waves:
my tools? a-       and -the            and every other ism
that might act as an auxiliary attaché - time (W).
but indeed the anti- implementation that serves as
direct Gemini chiral-ism: the latter serves no close
resemblance to be guided to Golgotha,
hence guided toward Megiddo, and a crucifix also there?

**** such religiosity twice over with its vortex,
as promised the Horace translation

       Empedocles, desirous of godliness in being so,
       having icily strutted toward old age and by
       old age near frozen, was prophesied to jump
       into flaming Etna. as they want, let the poets
       have a right to a death (of their choosing).
       who whomever against his will saves,
       twice-over rattles the suicide's intentions.
       it hasn't been the first time, it's not that easy
       to say it: i am human. he wants to immortalise
       himself, fame posthumously. he writes poems.
       why? maybe he urinated on his father's grave,
       maybe in a place basked by throngs he took
       from it the vices and in solitude became
       desolate with inherited uncleanliness of urbanity?
       like a bear with scars, prison bars he breaks open,
       scares off the wise and the foolish, such
       the adamant nature of compulsive poetic labour,
       whoever he grasps with recitations he
       finishes off, the leech attached to his skin will
       not fall off, until satiated with enough blood.


**dicam Siculique poetae narrabo interitum.
Carsyn Smith Dec 2013
If I am the minute hand,
you will be the hour and
every time I see you,
it feels like the first time.

It seems, no matter how far I go,
I will always run into you again.
Around n' around...
Time n' time again...

It seems we're stuck on treadmills,
never going anywhere
but constantly dreaming
of a far away finish line.

We'll trip and stumble,
just as all humans do,
but you'll never see us acknowledge it.
Our rule: talk about but never to.

Deep in my bones,
there is an ache that shakes me,
but no matter what I swear
I will see you next hour.

It is similar to a curse
that binds us with unchecked will.
No explanation-
just our actions that feel right.

So many questions as to Why
but how am I to explain
something that sits in my bones
and tells me Do

I'll say goodbye,
but what good will that do?
If I am the minute hand,
I will see you next hour.

— The End —