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Wayward and Eastbound
29/F/ATL   
15/Non-binary/Asgard    fuck gender roles and love hard

Poems

Stephan Cotton May 2017
Another shift, another day, Another buck to spend or save
A million riders, maybe more, delivered to their office door
Or maybe warehouse maybe store.
Or church or shul or city school, right on time as a rule.

Clickety, clackety, clickety, clee,
I am New York, the City’s me
Come let me ride you on my knee
From Coney Isle to Pelham Bay
From Bronx to Queens eight times a day.

Ride my trains, New Yorkers do
And you’ll learn a thing or two
About the City up above, the one some hate, the one some love.
On the street they work like elves
Down below they’re just themselves.

Through summer’s heat they still submerge,
Tempers held (though always on the verge),
They push, they shove – just like above –
The crowds will jostle, then finally merge.

Downtown to work and then back to sleep
They travel just like farm-herded sheep.
In through this gate and out the other,
Give up a seat to a child and mother,
Just don’t sit too close to that unruly creep!

With these crowds huddled near
Just ride my trains with open ear,
There’s lots of tales for you to hear.


Dis stop is 86th Street, change for da numbah 4 and 5 trains.  Dis is a Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.   77th Street is next.  Watch out da closin dowahs.


     I’m Doctor Z, Doctor Z are me
     I’ll fix your face or the visit’s free.
     Plastic surgery, nips and tucks
     You’ll be looking like a million bucks.

     Looka those pitchas, ain’t they hot?
     You’ll look good, too, like as not!
     Just call my numbah, free of toll
     Why should you look like an ugly troll?

     You’ll be lookin good like a rapster
     Folks start stealing your tunes on Napster
     Guys’ll love ya, dig your face
     Why keep lookin like sucha disgrace?

     Call me up, you’re glad you did
     Ugly skin you’ll soon be rid.
     Amex, Visa, Mastercard,
     Payment plans that ain’t so hard.

     So don’t forget, pick up that phone
     Soon’s you get yourself back home.
     I’ll have you looking good, one, two three
     Or else my name ain’t Doctor Z.


Dis stop is 77th Street, 68th Street Huntah College is next. Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Watch out da closin dowahs.


     It was a limo, now it’s the train;
     Tomorrow’s sunshine, but now it’s rain.
     The market’s mine, for taking and giving
     It’s the way I earn my living.

     Today’s losses, last week’s gain.
     A day of pleasure, months of pain.
     We sold the puts and bought the calls;
     We loaded up on each and all.

     I’ve seen it all, from Fear to Greed,
     Good motivators, they are, both.
     The fundamentals I try to heed
     Run your gains and avoid big loss.

     Rates are down, I bought the banks
     For easy credit, they should give thanks.
     Goldman, Citi, even Chase
     Why are they still in their malaise?

     “The techs are drek,” I heard him say
     But bought more of them, anyway.
     I rode the bull, I’ll tame the bear
     I’ll scream and curse and pull my hair.

     So why continue though I’m such a ****?
     I’ll cut my loss if I find honest work.



Dis is 68th Street Huntah College, 59th Street is next. Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Watch out da closin dowahs.


     He rides the train from near to far,
     In and out of every car.
     “Batchries, batchries, tres por un dolar!”
     Some folks buy them, most do not,
     Are they stolen, are they hot?
     “Batchries, batchries, tres por un dolar!”

     Who would by them, even a buck?
     What’re the odds they’re dead as a duck?
     “Batchries, batchries, tres por un dolar!”
     Why not the Lotto, try your luck,
     Or are you gonna be this guy’s schmuck?
     “Batchries, batchries, tres por un dolar!”


Dis is 59th Street, change for de 4 and 5 Express and for de N and de R, use yer Metrocard at sixty toid street for da F train.  51st Street is next. Dis is a Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Watch out da closin dowahs.


     “Dat guy kips ****** wit me, Wass he
     tink, I got time for dat ****?  Man, I
     got my wuk to do, I ain gona put
     up with him
     no more.”

          “I don’t know what to tell this dude. Like,
          I really dig him but
          ***?  No way.  And
          He’s getting all too smoochie face.”

     “Right on, bro, slap dat fool up
     side his head, he leave you lone.”

          “Whoa, send him my way.  When’s the last
          time I got laid?  I’m way ready.”

          “Oh, Suzie,..”


Dis is fifty foist Street, 42nd Street Grand Central is next. Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Watch out da closin doors.



     Abogados es su amigos, do you believe the sign?
     Are they really a friend of mine?
     Find your lawyer on the train
     He’ll sue if the docs ***** up your brain.

     Pick a lawyer from this ad
     (I’m sure that you’ll be really glad)
     You’ll get a lawyer for your suit,
     Mean and nasty, not so cute.

     Call to live in this great nation
     1-800-IMMIGRATION.
     Or if your bills got you in a rut
     1-800-BANK-RUPT.

     We’re just three guys from Flatbush, Queens
     Who’ll sue that ******* out of his jeans.
     Mama’s proud when she rides this train
     To see my sign making so much rain.

     No SEC no corporations
     We can’t find the United Nations.
     Just give us torts and auto wrecks
     And clients with braces on their necks.

     Hurting when you do your chores?
     There’s money in that back of yours.
     Let us be your friend in courts
     Call 1-800-SUE 4 TORTS.


Dis is 42nd Street, Grand Central, change for the 4, 5 and 7 trains. Dis is a Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Toity toid is next.  Watch out da closin doors.


They say there’s sev’ral million a day
From out in the ‘burbs, they pass this way.
Most come to work, some for to play
They all want to talk, with little to say.

Bumping and shoving, knocking folks down
A million people running around.
The hustle, the bustle the noise that’s so loud
Get me far from this madding crowd.

“We can be shopping instead of just stopping
And onto the next outbound train we go hopping.
Hey, it’s a feel that that guy’s a-copping!”

They want gourmet food, from steaks down to greens
Or neckties and suits, or casual jeans,
It’s not simply newspapers and magazines
For old people, young people, even for teens.


Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Dis is Thoidy toid Street, twenty eight is next.  Watch out da closin doors.


     “So what’s the backup plan if
     He doesn’t get into Trevor Day?
     I know your
     heart’s set on it, but we’ve only
     got so many strings we
     can pull, and we can’t donate a
     ******* building.”

           “Hooda believed me if I tolja the Mets
          would sail tru and the Yanks get dere
          by da skinna dere nuts?
          I doan believe it myself.  Allya
          Gotta do is keep O’Neil playin hoit
          And keep Jeter off his game an
          We’ll killum.

               “My sistah tell me she be yo *****.  I tellya I cut you up if you
                ****** wid her, I be yo ***** and donchu fuggedit.”

     “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.
     And we can just **** good and
     Well find some more strings to pull!”

          “Big fuggin chance.  Wadder ya’ smokin?”

               “Yo sitah she ain my *****, you be my *****.  I doan be ******
                wid yo sistah.  You tell her she doan be goin round tellin folks
                dat ****.”


Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Dis is Twenty eight Street, twenty toid is next.  Watch out da closin dowahs.


     Do you speak Russian, French or Greek,
     We’ll assimilate you in a week.
     If Chinese is your native tongue
     You’ll speak good English from day one.

     Morning, noon, evening classes
     Part or full time, lads and lasses.
     You’ll be sounding like the masses
     With word and phrase that won’t abash us.

     Language is our stock in trade
     For us it’s how our living’s made.
     We’ll put you in a class tonight
     Soon your English’ll be out of sight.

     If you’re from Japan or Spain
     Basque or Polish, even Dane,
     Our courses put you in the main
     Stream without any need for pain.

     We’ll teach you all the latest idioms
     You’ll be speaking with perfidium.
     We’ll give you lots of proper grammar
     Traded for that sickle and hammer.

     Are you Italian, Deutsch or Swiss?
     With our classes you can’t miss
     The homogeneous amalgamation
     Of this sanitized Starbucks nation.


Dis is Twenty toid Street, 14th Street Union Square is next. Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Watch out da closin doors.


     “Ladies and Gentlemen, I hate to bother you
     But things are bleak of late.
     I had a job and housing, too
     Before my little quirk of fate.”

     “There came a day, not long ago,
     When to my job I came.
     They handed me a pink slip, though,
     And ev’n misspelled my name.”

     “We’ve got three kids, my wife and me.
     We’re bringing them up right.
     They’re still in school from eight to three
     With homework every night.”

     “I won’t let them see me begging here,
     They think I go to work.
     Still to that job I held so dear
     Until fate’s awful quirk.”

     “So help us now, a little, please
     A quarter, dime (or dollar still better),
     It’ll go so far to help to ease
     The chill of this cold winter weather.”

     “I’ll walk the car now, hat in hand
     I do so hope you understand
     I’m really a proud, hard working man
     Whose life just slipped out of its plan.”

     “I thank you, you’ve all been oh so grand.”


Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Dis is 14th Street, Union Square, change for da 4 and 5 Express, the N and the R.   Astor Place is next.  Watch out da closin doors.


     The hours are long, the pay’s no good
     I’m far from home and neighborhood.
     All day I work at Astor Place
     With sunshine never on my face.
     Candy bar a dollar, a soda more
     A magazine’s a decent score.
     Selling papers was the game
     But at two bits the Post’s to blame
     For adding hours to my long day.
     All the more work to save
     Tuition for that son of mine: that tall,
     Strong, handsome, American son


Dis is a Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Yer at Astah Place, Bleekah Street is next.  Watch out da closin doors.


     Summer subway’s always hot, AC’s busted, like as not
     Tracks are bumpy, springs are shot ‘tween the cars they’re smoking
     ***.

     To catch the car you gotta run they squeeze you in with everyone
     Just hope no body’s got a gun 'cause getting there is half the fun.

     Packed in this car we’re awful tight seems this way both day and
     night.
     And then some guys will start a fight.  Subway ride’s a real delight.

     Danger! Keep out! Rodenticide! I read while waiting for a ride.
     This is a warning I have to chide:  
     I’m very likely to walk downtown, but I’d never do it Underground.

     Took the Downtown by mistake.  Please, conductor, hit the brake!
     Got an uptown date to make, God only knows how long I’ll take.


Yer ona Brooklyn Bridge bound Numbah 6 Train.  Dis is Bleekah Street, Spring Street is next.  Watch out da closin doors.


     The trains come through the station here,
     The racket’s music to my ear.
  &nbs
Images, overheard (and imagined) conversations.  @2003
Mark Kelley  Feb 2019
Prisoner
Mark Kelley Feb 2019
“Prisoner”

I'm a prisoner of my heart
I'm a prisoner of my soul
of the silent nights apart
of your touch that made me whole
Of searching through the trees
to find the path I'd lost
of the overwhelming joy
embraced at any cost
of looking for the line
in the poem that you wrote
full of unfiltered truth
in a little post it note

I'm a prisoner of my heart
I'm a prisoner of my soul

I'm a prisoner of my mind
I'm a prisoner of our times
of the search for empty words
to fit in time and rhyme
Of the visions from my past
that haunt me in my dreams
of what's never meant to last
what's never what it seems
of listening to the wind
sing like old ceramic chimes
I'm a prisoner of my mind
I'm a prisoner of our times

Bound in chains
from the stardust that we're built from
Bound in chains
in the shadows where we belong
Bound in chains
in the deck this hand was dealt from
Bound to play this hand
Bound to sing this song

I'm a prisoner of my love
I'm a prisoner of my tears
of the long forgotten memories
from the long forgotten years
of the times when it was magic
when we held the magic wand
of the love that lasts forever
even as we're lost and gone
of the sight that keeps me blinded
of the blindness that's finally made clear
I'm a prisoner of my love
I'm a prisoner of my tears

Bound in chains
from the stardust that we're built from
Bound in chains
in the shadows where we belong
Bound in chains
in the deck this hand was dealt from
Bound to play this hand
Bound to sing this song
Bound to find the key
to unlock the chains all along
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
why is pixel-white seen as a medium where you're "speaking"? i guess that's due to the immediacy, and bypassing orthodox publishing contracts... i'm not talking... i'm thinking... the difference between the age-old white of canvas used in publishing has changed... in a blink of an eye... the poorest of the poor have now attained a monopoly on the medium... which is why visual art had to become elitist, because artists could never fathom the freedom of having obtained such a freedom of the once monopolised medium of a crisp white page... and yanking the donkey further... i have no intention in treating this as me talking... the talking part is bound to the comment section... and once again, we can bypass the monopoly of literacy with the freedom of the medium also bypassed... i'm not talking... i'm thinking... the talking is done in the comment section... this isn't a care for an intellectual shoot-out... but why in the word do i have to write this, and be remindful? oh wait, now i know: i didn't have to chop a single tree down to then write on it pressed down as paper... but then i wouldn't have... because, if i had enough wine and château... i'd be writing a Dumas novel.

i feel like writing less and less the days,
3 weeks spent in Poland
exhausted me with talking and reading,
and having the rest of the world
alomost forgotten, among the pines
in a wood, with neatly fallen snow...
i can almost hear the words: you should
go back, then!
yes, and having lost investment in
22 years living in england, and perfecting
the tongue...
    had i not perfected the tongue,
i wouldn't see the maggots engaging in crowds
across the western world...
   what a sight...
      should they only be two serpents entwined...
but this is a world much different from 2007...
it's hard to pick-at an almost shared ethnicty
with the people of the Isles...
   the Romans are dead, yet we share the same
alphabetical arrangement...
     i'm not even ahead of my times,
i write less and less every day,
            because as my irish "friend" once suggested,
that i known language like i might
slurp custard, that i should be bound to my
local community of Poles in England...
   i guess like Seven Kings is basically Paddy
O'clock... drowning his sorrows: while
i spend the same hours, infuriating my passions...
and i get the only narrative available to us
these days, i get how darwinism has killed of
subjectivity, we're about to build a robot,
and how we don't like feeling that much...
i get that...
but i spent 22 yeasrs in these lands...
   why am so entrenched to give birth to
the one i had at "home", but feel no care to return
to the place?
        edging toward the third bottle of wine
on an empty stomach, and i write this...
  apparently you can feed your heart that took
to being an apple thrice-over to attract a satanic bite...
   the dalai lama is a *refugee
, what a grand
title, better than the pope could hope to be...
   i am an exile, and the worst reasons for exile
are economic...
   but no dumb-bound irishman can really
call that: i too was on the titanic, to better land sown!
i love the scots, spent three years in Edinburgh,
but the society i came to live in, the society i was
schooled in? i remember only 1 englishman
in the school... the rest were primarily irish...
terrible gnats...
               i live in england and it became to late
to meet an englishman...
   i'd sooner meet one abroad...
    i mean, if you knew someone from youth
and he says to you: you be better off with your kin...
my kin? my kin? on foreign soil?
and what? create these pocket like blisters, these
crab scabs of existence, so that i might live in
England but never learn the tongue?
this paddy hadn't even read Joyce, and i had,
and he tells me to be like him, a wasps' nest
kind of existence... the Poles have but one motto:
never congregate in exile... the 'rish evidently
didn't learn that motto... so they congregated...
and started doing the mating pigeon strutt
of a puffed up chest... like skunks they marched...
   i mean, who the **** does that?
i go to Cheltenham and everyone finds my "accent"
undecipherable...
             this coming from the same guy that couldn't
flick a lighter or cite the alphabet...
    i can go to Cheltenham and become lost
in the crowd... i'll go to a poetry reading and
stand, and clap and encore aloud when the poet
finishes...
             i wish i could go back to the native... land...
and go back to a: life, as usual...
but when you have lived 22 years in exile and
the most constructive years up to aged 8...
you dread the reality of being a child once,
and having idealised the life back where,
communism was dying... esp. given that your
grandparents have a steady pension,
and your father can't hope for one with
the state being applauding him for the efforts,
that the state and the worker are no longer
bound to an umbilical chord when pension age strikes...
  not since 2007, when it all began...
i can't be seen with the words of accusation
against my antagonist in any place nearing
a protest, i'd be scrapped-heaped and lost to the usual
comparison that men are:
  with celibacy intact: shoot anywhere other than
the ******, and you're wasting yourself...
but i wasn't circumcised, sure enough,
if you're circumcised and shoot that load into
a tissue... well... you sorta did touch
the philosophers' stone with your phallus...
    ****! ****! the deadpool movie is ****!
and i can't say that the dada art movment
is worth nothing... the girl, this blonde from Seattle
mentions nothing of cubism...
         modern art isn't useless...
        i can't be epileptic bound to faint before
a mona lisa... i can't do that... but dada wasn't
anything anti-art, of whatever movement...
      dada was anti-war... dada was an anti-war
movement.... it ensured that art be equated with
the whole futility of human endeavour...
   art will make no sense if there's no heroism
and men sit in trenches with wet socks and wet
cigarettes and rats will they ever walk the same
on the marble pavement of Florence...
             dada was anti-war... dada wasn't
anti-impressionism or anything like that...
      it's when artists started experiencing mental illness,
a psychic relapse into dough, dull, and lullaby
worth nothing...
                                  it's about the time that dada
emerged (world war i) that warfare had to turn
to guerilla warfare for some sense of Mars enduring...
   i thought people might think it stupid
during the Napoleonic wars... walking up to your
enemy and at point blank range shooting them down...
so no eastern martial arts agility...
      no wars makes the same sense as the depravity to
reproduce: eager soldiers... given there are none
to replace the numbers.
    yet, that language of darwinism, that objectivity,
that language of: no will unless the will of the species,
a species akin to comparison with ant or other
worthy comparative multiplier of insect worth...
     i get it... meaning i feel nothing for the examples
surrounding me, and i get hyper-sensitive about
the theory...
                    which is a great shame that i feel
no great feat before me when looking upon a woman....
  but then again i could merely qualify as
a ***** talking... because that's easier done...
    and you'd think that bilingualism wasn't such
a proper, well, it is, among the poor...
     it's a real... a REAL! a real threat!
           for some reason i get the feeling that Polish
has to become a bit like outdated Gaelic...
           a great story over campfire... that we once might
have spoken it...
                 i still speak the **** tongue
because i like listening to folk songs...
         but hey! that's my private life... i can still
talk English to you in that grand social-contract of
ensuring we interact... evidently that was the least
liked possibility...
                     i was expected to forget it...
and integrated with the ******* Paddies in England
and speak Polish: no more!
                  i don't want to forget Polish in the same
way that the English don't want to learn
a foreign language, and have the empire upon
which the night never sets upon:
   you're telling me it's not bound to perpetual
daylight working your way from Alaska, New Zealand,
South Africa and England?
   insomniac empire not there?
   i swear i could see it for a minute...
oh, my bad... maybe it was really all about
a drunken night in Dooblin...
            as i remember, not since 2007 has everything
been so: bonkers...
       it's just a case of trying to claim why
my native country ejected me from it...
   or why my parents thought it was necessary to
flee...
                but then i can ask any question
i want and will never get a good reply...
               now that i speak the language i don't
know how to erase 22 years of incubation...
      i can drink as many wine bottles and whiskey
bottles, but it never does it justice...
    and will continue to do so...
    when i get my answers...
                  and, as it looks like...
  i'm bound to be prone to being blamed for a tsunami
than take a blame for having friendship-binds
    when growing up,
      because the a.i. needed improvement,
and that Barabbas lived no life spectacular after
being admonished by the crowd prior
to the desecration of the tetragrammaton by
the crucifx wielder.
    well, this would appear a world salad for a paddy...
given that words for him are all merely verbs
and none address pondering them as nouns
  to reach a nuance...
                       and a delay worthy of 2000 years...
but then again...
           what do i know...
                 once i was the lost to pounce
     on the argument, now i seem to be the first
            to say anything...
                  but here's the therapy...
         people can speak such a godly narrative
  and incorporate it from ants to humans,
   bypassing the mammals the prime mammal
is making extinct... and taking no impression from
fellow mammal... bypassing the mammalian
category, for the sake of number, and argue oh so well
many intended arguments... ants...
    and then get ****** over by an avalanche...
and then wonder with the non-bewildered chemists:
dunno... physics?!
    humanism is trapped in the greatest robbery of
the human heart, if it once belonged by the crucifix,
and with due need, become humbled...
it's now under the ******* microscope and "ennobled",
pride hardened...
     it's an objectivity that doesn't encompass all
   categories... i can so much about ants having perfected
its hierarchy... and i try to imitate...
         sure, it works...
                  i have no need for subjective scientists that
poets are... i need more plumbers... but, wait...
i have to import them from Poland...
                   because i actually no actual
   pill for objective anaesthesia to be implemented
   given that i have the same automaton tendency to
feel, as i have to think, as i therefore have to reciprocate
by being existent...
                 but then again being prescribed
the shadow theories of darwinism, while turning
epileptic with paparazzis dumbing me at the catwalk,
work together... they're not mutually exlcusive...
    mutual exclusiveness is the argument usured in
by moral relativism, whereby moral relativism believes
in the non-existence of mutual inclusvieness...
     inclusivelly the standard bearers are bound to
the coordinate functions of (+, -),
       exclusivelly the standard bearers are bound to
the coordinate functions of (x, ÷)...
meaning that inclusviely: 1, 2, 3, includes 4...
                 1 + 1 = 2... 2 + 1 = 3...
        the near proximity... adding and substracting
are less abstract than multiplying and dividing...
   they do interact, the two factions...
     it's not magic, it's the limitation of my ability
to use language... philosophy really is about being
able to reach a limit of having all possible
competence with language morphed from
phonos to the rightly defined logos, as that
which encounters optics and the higher optics of
cognitive experience; deemed thought,
or the moral compass... and how rarely thought
is not bound to it being a moral compass,
how many times the moral compass
exists, pointing toward the θ / N...
    and the -ought is merely squandered to fiction,
and other such pleasures... and rarely
asked to be done to the moral principal that
overshadows mere naturalistic observations...
trans-category... we, the pinnacle of mammal,
behave like no mammal...
              once again i'll hear the retortion:
infantile argument!
                                it has always been infantile and
delusional, haven't you noticed?
     i find it strange to be living in times of
such rational, truly gifted "adults"...
   i could swear to be looking at the current civilisation
as a kind of kindergarten.
     but then... why bother argue the point further,
when you can laugh, drinking the third bottle of
your home-made wine?