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Joseph Childress Sep 2010
Apart
Departed
Parted ways
Discard
This card
Its a scar
A love scar
It tells
A tale
Of what once was
A stale
Stench
Fumes from the outdated
Perfume
The lipstick print
Burned
A permanent
Memory
I'll never forget
Those lips
Slipped
After i danced
With the devil
For a bit
I
The advocate
For too much pride
Abdicated
My position
As dictator
For your revolution
Your free
This civil war
Was uncivilized
Lies
Across the frontline
Frontin, lying
Guess
I'm a traitor
I traded
It all
For the greatest fall
I ever took
I know
I don’t deserve
A parachute

So let me loose...

.Suicidal Paratrooper.
Louis Brown Sep 2010
They put me by the door
And I could see below
800 feet to the ground
A solid green carpet
Looking soft enough to sleep on.
But the limbs underneath
Were sharp and deadly.
It wasn't a good day
For a jump I thought.
Who wants to jump out of a C-47
On their first airplane ride
Into the wild blue yonder--
No one with good sense
As I answered my own question.
I remembered hearing about
The guy who received a parachute
Not knowing it needed repair
But he had faith nothing happened
To a nice guy like him.
So when he jumped out
And didn't feel the jolt slow down
His descent to the ground
He looked up with panicked eyes
And saw the chute fluttering away.
He muttered a few cuss words
When he saw the ground come fast.
He didn't pull his reserve in time
And never heard the deadly thud.
Those were my thoughts
As the T-7 parachute
Opened with the snap of a whip
Just as the parachutist behind me
Started walking on my canopy.
I could see his boots sink in deep
And I hollared, get your sorry *** off
You low life no good *******--
A panic lingo that flowed out
Because I was scared crapless
At the turn of events.
Luckily my chute didn't collapse
And his chute started floating away.
No harm done except my nerves
Were a little frayed.
It only takes about 8-10 seconds
To get to the ground
From the time you leave the plane.
So I looked down and there it was
With the wind blowing about 20 knots.
I could feel myself swaying
Much like a pendulum on a clock.
I wasn't trained to land on my back
As I'd learned the five point landing technique
But then the ground slammed my rear
With a sledge hammer effect
Knocking the light off in my brain.
But I must have awakened shortly
As the wind had opened my canopy
Dragging me across the rocky landing zone
Till I became aware and remembered
To pull the bottom risers on my chute
To empty the air from it
So I could roll on top of it.
Then an instructor came by yelling
Get your *** up soldier
And take your chute back where you got it.
I responded accordingly
Wanting to keep my nose clean
And make the rest of my jumps
So I could get my Parachutist Wings.
It would take 4 more jumps that week.
I had to meet those requirements
Or they would send my derriere oveseas
Where a war was going on.
That was all the incentive I needed
To bust my **** gladly
And claw my way to paratrooper status.
Geronimo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
I thought sheepishly to myself
For my not so altruistic bravado.
Copyright Louis Brown
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
oh i didn't write something to change the boundaries,
i wanted to capture the digital narrative,
or how the hope of destroying all forms of theology
with our a.i. gravitas, we started to
apply the digital anaesthetic -
and cradle the numbing effects of:
                 us, in experiment,
or: us, in a medium of synthetic material...
             either way pushing us apart friom actually
inhabiting organic matter...
           the many of us these these are merely pawn
in the game...
                  we're pawns in a construction site
of all thing theretical... meaning it's truly 2D by comparison
to the 3D structures we see...
       the element that will truly give a.i. it's ego?
wait wait... why with latin dead and me not speak it
but i have this theoretical baggage of ego?
            ego is only short of en egg should i decide to
write it... arbeit macht frei must come from
counter-conceptualisation of the remains of the roman
empire with self- (hyphen included), to remind people
that it's all about work, and how we will either loose
or free ourselves from the re in the setting sun to echo aeons...
that might be the case...
            but find me a modern day writer who has
to use this medium of people talking over one another...
find me a writer who''s lodged in the internet like
a cherry atop a cake...
          who can't be gagging for a log cabin in some obscure
place, who has to be in the thick of it...
       i'm not writing to change the world,
i'm writing to describe the status quo...
            qua norm, or should i say "norm"...
from status quo comes the question: qua status?
     when i write i think about throwing a pebble into
a lake, compared to throwing a pebble into a river...
compared to throwing a pebble into a sea...
to be honest? throwing a pebble into a sea is
the most involving...
                  and there is poetic subconscious in this,
which i will unearth: the pebble is supposed to mean this:
the three forms of water are supposed to represent
another this:
                                 the pebble is supposed to represent
a soul, a concentration of my my, my sigma (total),
and the three tiers of water are supposed to represent this...
that said, i watched
    an internet video... by angry mgtow...
an answer to white women are rejecting beta males now /
blonde in the belly of the beast...
   first thing: why are men using the internet
deemed more "creepy" than women?
    we've already embarked on this a.i. project for the sole
reason as to overcome theological argument and
religion... we are living in a Frankenstein experiment,
but the "problem" is that we're only working on
the software package of the beast...
         the hardware can wait... we're not going to replace
our fondness for busdrivers and cleaners any time soon...
  we love our manual labourers...
                  american woman! stay away from me!
american woman! mama let me be!

   (it's daily, over and over in my head, that line and
many more kindred sing-alongs)
   we've already been drafted into creating the software
of the a.i. beast, it doesn't matter that the
hardware is already there but that we've stalled its
potential... the software is harder to be bound to
the logistics a limb might be drafted to exhibit basic
tongue of movement...
          all compliments to women:
they're the irrationality that will give the a.i. the spark!
           meaning autonomy...
  and how could i not even sound like an atypical man?
don't date the opposite ***?
              tease urban living with what life's like in
the middle-zone of outer-urbanity, i.e. the case of
a ******* bungalow? ha ha.
                              but this video got me like i might
catch a herring, and i do love pickled herrings...
raw pickled herrings...  it just got me
when i said: i'd like to move to the Faroe Islands...
no please, spare me the misery...
                         it's hard not to be
sexually antagonistic (sexist) - esp. when you're
not a sheikh with a motorboat and a fluffy moustache
that might brush-up against the ******* like
a vibrating ***** while you taste the pastries of flesh
with a saintly glee...
             every time i performed oral ***
on her i felt i left that hot-spot having slobbered
a tonne of lard... smeared a tonne of ****** cream and
that my face became phosphorescent, or an anglerfish:
which is the first sign before you don't even
bother to care to launch a space mission apollo 13
into the depths containing stars... or ask
      ridley scott...
                          i think he's the one dubbed:
coping mechanism... unlike philip k **** this guy's
a coping mechanism, a rare spectacle:
science fiction obstructs actual science...
                     i'm glad he's around and i pray that
we truly explore the depths of seas before going up
there: where the sun don't shine.
                  but this video got to me...
                i can't relate to it, either with the masculine
theory or the feminine experience...
i don't know: it almost feels like i live in a time
capsule at the best part of the 20th century when
i could still buy compact discs in a music shop
on a high-street... when there was no over-arching
agarophobia and claustrophobia telling us
when it was worthwhile to leave the house...
   and when it wasn't...
                         i opened another bottle of wine
that i made myself, and i don't know...
                  we started by ridding ourselves of god
to later replenish that end with a death of us,
it's almost as if we're staging parameters of being human
in this 2D construction site, on the basics:
merely exchanging opinions...
                                         i have, coming naturally:
this curiosity with the internet...
   i remember times of hotmail.com chatrooms...
      it's not as old as some people will claim the burden
to be, but the times when the ****** medium was
being sold to us... before facebook and subsequently otherwise
people were still very much comfortable before the television
set... but then people became less interested in
music and decided music could only exist in software
and not hardware, and i started to forage the berry shrubs of
youtube for music...
  i hope i don't precipitate any thought toward
nostalgia... bearing in mind i did establish myself
on the memory of having been to the cinema
to watch the films blow and austin powers 2:
the spy who shagged me
- and in the latter case
i laughed at the shadow-scene like i might at
a laurel and hardy... and in the former case i loved
the music... and that's before comedy became too
"intelligent": too canned laughter...
revisionist existentialist, when dittoing can no longer
mean borrowing, or passing on a meaning,
                     or d.n.a. competition, when the end result
is but ~ (approximate) / ambiguity...
    the too intelliget: canned laughter...
                   the last time i really laughed at the movies
i was watching austin powers 2: the spy who shagged me...
the tent scene... it was the epitome of comedy,
a laurel and hardy slap stick incantation of a viewer...
   i guess it only comes with a sense of an individual
finding something so simple funny, that when
the same individual is dropped like a paratrooper into
a cinema audience: his laughter will become akin to
a virus, and thus become infectious and the individual
in mind because the cursor for canned laughter
later stored, to witness a televised episode of Friends
or Fraiser... which... would you believe it: aren't funny at all.
what was i going on about in the first place?
      ha ha... dunno... which makes Nick Harper a comic
genius... every time i see him
i laugh like a tickled ******* dangling off a bull horn
and two words ring a bell: mein shawl! and yes: it's
dramatically flinged, like i might be found
******* against the wind...
   quick question! five easy pieces rebel or cool hand
luke rebel?!
John Cleland  Apr 2012
Lucky Bug
John Cleland Apr 2012
Lucky Bug

Black polka dots –
on a vibrant red
wing.

Six silent footsteps –
clutching to the ceiling,
daredevil wearing a smile.

A single false step –
wings spread;
always prepared to skydive.

Tranquil buzz in your ear;
noise translated to ethereal music -
whispers of joy.

Gently landing on your shoulder –
the paratrooper hits its mark
without fail.

Lady Luck presents herself,
calm in nature -
magical when seen.

Uncommon blessings -
found on the edge of a leaf,
the corner of your eye.
Poetoftheway Feb 2018
she writes me from Paris

wanting a command,
exactement comme moi
all her own.
to scribe.
in “a style with strength”

exactement comme moi
exactly like me

where the ideas percolate
for the precise gestation period
and the birth-born poems a-coming
without and within silent no belabored pain,
making the child appear as if it was only waiting
already, on its own good time. for saying thank you
for your patient waiting and who is really in
command?

when the overwhelming light orders “write”
I am gone from yesterday and the safe of picayune
does that sound like I am in
command?

you wish to command?

join the navy, the army,
become a paratrooper,
command in poetry is illusory,
for it comes from the bell tower rage of madness
of what my ancestors planted and bequeathed genetically,
and I have wasted the better half of a century appealing for
relief and making it clear who commands and who is the
“poetoftheway” slave

rejoindre la marine, l'armée,
devenir un parachutiste,
commande en poésie est illusoire,
car il vient du clocher de la rage de la folie
de ce que mes ancêtres ont planté et légué génétiquement,
et j'ai gaspillé la meilleure moitié d'un siècle attrayant pour
soulagement et en précisant qui commande et qui est le
“Poetoftheway" esclave

exactement comme moi
exactly like me?

exactly.
Ainsley Oct 2015
Deathbed Confession

“In 1971 a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked
a plane from Portland to Seattle, demanded parachutes
and $200,000 in cash, then jumped into the night with
the money, never to be seen again.” — fbi.gov

So little seemed to be at stake.
The bomb was real; the threat was fake.
Neither was difficult to make.

And I was in my element,
or almost there. Yes, the descent
was cold, but warmer as I went,

and yes it was coal black and raining,
but I had uppers and my training.
I’ve spent my whole life not complaining.

When I could see the woods I wandered
out with the twenties, which I laundered,
safety-deposited, and squandered,

and with the oddest thing — a name
I’d paid for but could never claim,
a private riddle, private fame.

That’s been the hardest part: denial —
remaining of no interest while
the Bureau opened up a file

on every former paratrooper
who in his final morphine stupor
discovered he was D.B. Cooper.

I’m D.B. Cooper. There, I said it.
It’s decent work if you can get it,
but it pays cash. There is no credit,

or blame, or pity in thin air,
and I’ve spent forty winters there.
I’ll take whatever you can spare,

although I don’t suppose the guy
whose last confession is a lie
deserves it any less than I.

*This piece is written by Kansas Poet Laureate Henry McHenry. The rights to the poem are completely his.
Daniel Samuelson  Nov 2014
Autumn
Daniel Samuelson Nov 2014
The paratrooper
clad in chlorophyllic green
stoic in resolve he leaps
jettisoned from lofty perch
spiraling in space
tumbling through time.
Airborne
born into the air
delivered to the dirt
he dies, decomposes
a casualty of consequence
body brown and rotting in the rain.

Wars are waged and seasons change
and the world spins on in spite of all.
So it's more like winter now, at least here at school. The first snow happened on Sunday, and another comes tonight. I wrote this a little over a month ago as the leaves began to fall and decided I ought to post it to make it seem like I'm not completely in a dry season for writing (Spoiler Alert: I am). But here. =)
topaz oreilly Nov 2012
Colours buy silence.
I publicly deny Prussian Blue was my first,
the colour of a Paratrooper
but my Lover bequested the time.
I subterfuge the lower end scale of green,
like hopeless moss
coilling my Adversaries dreams
I am sunk with a kiss -
deeper than quagmire
she will obtuse my decree,
home is the tireless winds
further than the cut of her high cheekbones
tread Aug 2013
I vowed to say nothing
but know this: I love you. I love you more than waking up at 5 AM after a night of camping, the smell of dewey cold conquistadoring my blunt and modern senses. I love you more than the girl who haunted my every waking moment for months after the solvent collapse. I love you more than when someone says, ‘you’re the most beautiful person I know.’ I love you more than the taste of freshly ground arabica bean on a cold winter morning, watching the snow flit past the window like little paratrooper angels here to spread the word of pristine silence. I love you more than nights spent watching the stars with a morning empty of obligation. I love you more than my crack addiction to knowledge. And you know who you are.
And when I write vaguely of someone I love

 I hope you remember 


It’s you, you beautiful freak of my life.
It’s you, it’s you, it will always
be you.
a special thanks to the greatest thing to ever happen to me

I love you.

— The End —