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Trevor Gates Apr 2013
Walking back onto the street around nine O’clock
Pizzerias, Clubs and white guys with dreadlocks
Moving like sea urchins with an urge to mock
Hey 2 for one at Roxy’s for black rubber *****

I’m carrying two bags of groceries; One with a pie
There are no stars in the city. Just the moon in the sky
I move lazily and tired as evening joggers pass by
“God I wish I was more active.” I say with a sigh.

I ascend the stairs because the **** elevator is broken
One flight. Two flight. ******* wood surely is oaken
2 minutes of climbing the obstacle that’s unspoken.
I suffer for being the Asian, the part-Korean token.

I reach my apartment, music playing through the wall
I feel worn out and about ready to fall
But I walk in and proceed, feeling anything but tall.
The time has come. I walk to the kitchen from the hall.

I live with three roommates: Sam, Dean an Owen.
Sam is shut in his room. He’s a DJ and I think Samoan
Dean is weird. Don’t ask about flagellated protozoan
And Owen is a reader and blogger. Just plain Owen.

I place the groceries on the counter, I stumble.
Owen is reading and I hear him mumble
“Did you say something?” I grumble
“Wrong Pie.” He says, his words fumble.

“What?” I don’t understand

   “Wrong pie.” Owen says again.
I point towards the pie on the table. “What, this?”
    “Yeah.” He says.
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Everything.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, it’s the wrong pie.”
    “How?”
    “It’s apple.”
    “Yeah, so?”
    “But I thought you were going to get cherry?”
I shrug my shoulders, “Yeah but they were out.”
    “Where did you go?” Owen asked, but he knew.
    “Just that corner market.”
    “Well why the hell did you go there, you know they don’t have **** there.”
    “Does it matter?  I got most of the things.”
    “Yeah, most.  Not all.  You didn’t get the right pie.”
    “Does it matter?” I tell him. Owen closes his book.
    “I think so.”
    “At least I got a pie.  You guys said, ‘Hey man, make sure you get a pie’. You didn’t say get a ******* cherry pie!”
    I try to calm down, but the blasting of dubstep remixes warp my thinking process.  Owen leaves the kitchen and knocks on the doors. He tells them I’m back and that I ******* up the groceries.
“I did no such thing!” I yell, “You ***** think you told me what to get but you’ll all too into yourselves to ever know what the *******’re saying and you come off as ignorant over-privileged *******! Yeah Owen you’re so unique” I mock sarcastically, “Must be why you dress exactly the same as every other hipster here, going online and vlogging about the same **** a 12 year-old in suburban America would talk about and his ***** probably haven’t even dropped.”
    Owen’s eyes are wide, never seeing this side of me before. Sam and Dean open their doors to see all the commotion.
I walk back in to the kitchen and grab the pie.
    “Here *******!” I toss the pie as hard as I can so it hits the ceiling. The tin tray falls to the ground and the apple crusted pie is splattered, stuck to the ceiling like an IKEA fan made of butchered apples.
    I open the door.  “Dubstep is just edited noises of transformers having ***!”
I slam the door and leave, walking back downstairs and onto the street


Roommates ******* ****. I was tired of their **** and rules.
They used me for their homework, Working me like a mule
I’m barely able to pass my classes, let alone graduate from school
So trivial to help them just to earn my cool.

I flipped up my hood and rushed through the streets
I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t care who I’d meet
A slice from Death Metal Pizza, a drink from Fat man Pete.
I need to let loose. Relax and take that invigorating leap.

I stumbled upon an old movie theater, playing classics, new and old
“I want tickets for all the shows.” To the box office I told.
I bought popcorn and milkduds. I think my chair had mold.
And watched as Al Pacino was out of jail; being paroled.

Carlito’s Way, then intermission
A glimmer of previews then Pulp Fiction.
Ezekiel 25:17 and blasts of omission
From Jules’ and Vincent’s handgun ammunition  

After the credits roll I get three hot dogs and a large soda
Next movie: The Evil Dead, enough to put me in a coma
AH ******* demons Killing like the cancer of lymphoma
Scaring me and making me spill my watered-down cola.

Next was the Monty Python to ease the chills
Ensuring talking fish, puking and hilarious thrills
I really enjoyed the collective animation stills
I was relieved from the films and I had my fills

Now I had a good place to come and let loose, relax and laugh
And I wouldn’t have to display my clustered, boiled wrath
To my ******* roommates. Maybe I’ll move out on their behalf
We’ll see how it plays out. I’ll write a “*******” graph.

But thanks to them I found a new way to survive
Which is better than the alternative; a desperate suicide
Watching movies late at night is better for me than to die
All ascertained from the incident of the wrong ******* pie.
Please forgive me for that middle section just being a straight narrative.  I thought it would add comedic effect. This whole thing started out as a short story. I was converting everything to the rhyming scheme but I just loved what I originally had for that part that I just kept it like it was.

Lot's of fun in this one. i couldn't help but laugh to myself some of the ridiculous rhymes (or lack of) I was trying to squeeze in.

Good references in here to Pulp Fiction, Carlito's Way, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and The Evil Dead.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
so... i know that i will not be richer than
my parents...
they're heading off for two weeks
to Costa Rica,
while i'm heading back to Poland...
a tourist hellhole,
back to the town of my birth,
a ****-hole (once communism collapsed,
the steel industry collapsed)
to spend five masochistic weeks
with a neurotic grandmother,
who hums a lot,
a song i'm still to decipher...
and a dementia riddled grandfather,
to read a book,
       not drink, not use the internet:
on that point... thank ****!
i'll need about 5 weeks to forget how
**** youtube became in the past year!
it's not exactly a, "holiday"...
when i think of the tropics i think...
that one time in Kenya...
looking for shade...
why do these people travel
to the most obscene destinations
for a ******* suntan?
or some, other **** and *******?!
go somewhere colder...
i said to them... go to Norway...
you'll come back to England...
hey presto! the tropics!
instead, going to a tropical region,
and then experiencing holiday
blues, shell-shocked by the return
to the cold...
   it's like you're in an ice-bath one
minute... foo! into the sauna with
you....           eh?!
but i appreciate the offer...
it's not like enjoyed Kenya that much...
what, a, waste, of, time...
the macaque monkeys and
the pirate baboon were the only fun
bits staying at this tourist resort...
the rest?
bland bland blah blah...
i was so bored that i just pretended
to sleep most of the time...
just give me the ******* basics,
a book to read, long nights,
and two old people,
and enough recipes to cook for them...
i'll be fine...
    i'm not exactly the type
easily distracted like a cat might
be with a laser pointer...
5 weeks? a 3 volume book?
over 1000+ pages?
                smithy...
                   ****... it's more
than a holiday, it's a hiatus...
i can leave this garbage lewd language
behind and turn to the high-brow
19th century *******...
no, i think this time, i'll cut off
the internet completely,
i'll not buy credit...
i'll not drink for five weeks,
i'll certainly not ******* for five weeks...
i'll not smuggle in bottles
of ***** and drink and write
at the kitchen table during the night...
**** it, i'll make this classic...
i'll be armed with 70cl of liquor
for the trip,
that should do it,
the alcohol ought to run out by
the time i'm as Warsaw Western
train-station...
so me cooking dinners for two old
people for a month...
obviously i'll take a book in English,
so i don't, "forget" the language...
Heidegger's ponderings VII - XI...
plus... i sleep better in the fellow
land...
   i don't need alcohol to lullaby
me...
   which is a nice relief...
one thing you find out,
after doing a self-imposed rehab...
you appetite comes back,
you actually eat three meals
a day...
given the day's genesis of
a coffee and 2 hour's worth of reading...
i guess that's why i wouldn't
bother going on holiday
to some exotic location,
sieving through two weeks of
a tourists' resort...
         who the **** expects to read,
on the beech?
  in Kenya i could hardly breathe
in the sun... shade shade... show me the shade!
i almost can't wait...
a hiatus mingling with a reading
holiday...
  a neurotic grandmother
and a dementia prone grandfather...
match made in heaven...
  i just can't wait for the nights
were he attempts to wander out
from the apartment wearing his
pajamas... working on calming him
down and getting him back to bed...
oh, don't worry...
dementia isn't that bad...
it doesn't involve any
   hostile proteins... that eat the brain
away... he's just super-charged
with memories...
that, yes, that flaw of being
mortal...
the cameo cinema floods
the old mind...
                           but i do like
the fact that my presence uplifts him...
i still feel pretty ****** not
bothering to read a book suggestion
he's nudging me to read...
what?
  Leopold Tyrmand's
      book zły,
and i'm like... but when you die...
i won't have any meaningful association
with this country, or these people?
if you're into the vlogging scene
you'll know this...
tim pool / tim cast...
'they're just, economic migrants...
oh? so... that makes me less than
what is a, "genuine" migrant...
a refugee...
you know, the Kosovo refugees
that came to England in the late 1990s...
and were prominent around
the Ilford train-station?
they ****** off!
   but the economic migrants remained,
integrated...
  just economic migrants...
yeah, because economic migrants
were not just the same old migrants
with not language skills they had to learn
as, muted 8 year old kids in
a primary school...
     oh no... economic migration is
privy to all the benefits of...
"other" migrations...
      oh yeah... i was ready, economically...
oomph...
             i had it easy... all the way through,
having my *** smeared with
honey sitting on a laurel wreath!
we're just economic migrants...
           **** it... let's call Pol ***
and get this party started...
we can even groove out
to the brian jonestown massacre's
song fingertips...
                        while we're at it!
god... 5 weeks... no internet...
the rekindled fascination
with the texture of paper in my hands...
this is more than a holiday...
     this is a well earned hiatus;
where i'm going to, isn't my "home"...
all it is, is a memory...
of a child leaving it aged 8...
there is no longing of me for it...
i'm not some czesław miłosz...
who left with a longing...
   economic migration has that aspect
worth its worth...
you... have no emotional investment,
in either the place you left,
or the place you went to...
Poland gave birth to me,
but England isn't a home either...
    this... this language?
this isn't ownership of the British people,
since anyone can acquire it...
conquer it, without even wanting
an inch of the language's geographic
extensions...
  i, i own, this, language...
because, it, is, mine!
this is my home...
            and sure as ****...
Poland is a vague recollection,
the day my grandparents die,
the die when i have no one to speak
Polak to...
                that will be my first death...
i'm, white, you see, i'm privileged,
i get to experience more than one death!
   i really have a vague sense
of identity...
         the best assumption i can
make of myself is... to be... rōnin;
i pledge no allegiance to either camps,
i have a certain critique of both...
i have my reasons...
but it's not like i'm going to tell people
what they are.
Tiana Marie Apr 2018
The life of a Youtuber
new and just trying
hardly any subscribers
and barely surviving

She pulls out her camera
and then everyone stares
she's vlogging publically
and suddenly everyone cares

had she have no camera
she'd be just a normal girl
no one would even look her way
and judge her like an ungodly pearl

yet she still talks to the screen
for they are her only friends
the 19 subscribers
she talks to without end

she smiles as she watches
her view count go up to 40
and dreams of the day
it'll turn into 60

She posts and posts
but what no one really sees
is the girl behind the camera
in real life, she'd freeze

she's now in the store
and talking to her screen
people look at her like she's crazy
and she wishes she couldn't be seen

But someday she'll earn
ten millions of subscribers
and those very same people
will love her with each one of their fibers

So she just keeps on going
hoping and wishing
that someday she'll make it
so she just keeps on keeping.
I JUST STARTED A VLOGGING CHANNEL! You guys should subscribe! I'd love you FOREVERRRRR. I'm barely starting out so any feedback on my channel is accepted and encouraged! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUVqEPpQV2q_qNvfs3Q1bA
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
i've sifted through all the youtube videos
of vloggers and...
i'm not sure why i don't go back to
listening to BBC radio 4...
it can be said: you either "move up" to talk radio
from having listened to classical music
or you "move down" and listen to jazz...

i only watched a snipped of:
sometimes always never - starring bill nighy...
and i wanted to watch more...
but... nothing came in the way...
i felt like sitting in the kitchen on a stool
drinking a san miguel beer and smoking
a cigarette: come night i've shot all the birds
dead... there's only me never wishing
to sigh... the vacuum and some wind...

how did i get drawn into vlogging...
i will never know... i listen like a patient
parent and it's still: knock-knock no one answers...
because... this isn't BBC Radio 4...
so a welcome return to... being my own d.j.

in and out of whims... today's whim...
grant green's: green blue...
when jazz is still somehow the blues...

it's not an urban myth...
when the ****** alcoholics became desperate
and there was a shortage of *****...
they'd filter a bottle of denaturant through
a slice of sour-crust bread...
yes... that fluorescent purple liquid...
methylated alcohol...
        and here's not me writing about going
to an irish catholic school where...
they would teach 10year olds about
the pit-falls of sniffing glue...
no mention of LSD mind you...

oh yeah... they would filter the denaturant
through a slice of sour-crust bread...
and then drink it...
otherwise i don't know how they ended
up a tier above drinking perfumes...

competition... competition...
is it always about competition?
what about jobs that are fixed... and do not
allow competition...
how there's a rigid schedule and what not...
i mean... a self-employed taxi driver
can compete... but it's hardly possible
for a bus driver to act like a taxi driver...
not everything is a hand in poker
or...               irregular plumbing...
and sure... i too would be jealous of
all the *** elsewhere...
if i weren't the piston and the sweat and...
the only joy i ever got from ***
was seeing her moan...
                      and that's... toothpicks compared
to when you can be walking through
a square mile of pines and only pines...
and pine needles...

- nonetheless i had to make sure...
is a haig club whiskey worth all that it's worth...
at 25 quid per 70cl?
if it wasn't on a discount... i wouldn't...
i'd stick to the reserve...
problem... well... you can sell beer in cans...
provided you have a glass to pour it in...
for the cushion of head of whipping cream
to sooth your lips on...
you can sell a beer in brown bottles you can
sell beer in green bottles...
you might get away with selling beer in
clear bottles: if it's a corona beer and -esque...
but you can't...
you simply can't get away with selling
whiskey in... purple tinged bottles...

the haig club is a ******: over-priced whiskey...
what's with the scots brewing everything
so smoky?! to begin with?
i get the smoked salmon... but no...
the irish at least allow their whiskey
to mellow... sweeten a bit...
you can drink an irish moon down and out
through and into a dipper of
the lips making plucking sounds befitting
a connoisseur...

but the gig is up when you over-price your
whiske... only because you're selling it
in purple glass bottles...
again: is it whiskey i'm drinking or is it
a perfume? i might as well be drinking perfume...
good that the "whiskey" was on a discount...

interlude: finally melville caught a goldfish
and all of his wishes were: let it be a whale,
let it be a whale, let it be a whale...
      
there's no way in hell getting away selling
over-priced whiskey...
just because the bottle looks "groovy"...
and it's all purple...
as i already mentioned...
    purple... purple reminds me of...
those desperado alcoholics from under
the iron curtain who would filter a bottle of
denaturant through a slice of sour-crust bread...

whiskey and purple... sorry... ms. amber...
and they're selling this over-priced ****
like it wasn't supposed to be equivalent to
a commoners' bells' whiskers 'n' scratches...

a girlfriend of the remains of a bottle...
if you see a tank parked... and it's not a warzone...
let me know... i'd love to gear it up
for a salvo for, no particular reason other than
to make up for straight-lines with a zigzag...

these four walls, this roof... this floor...
this irritated bladder...
this hope for an 8 hour kipper and for midnight
not having to be extended toward sunrise of
a 6am March...

off-the-cut when writing comes this...
spontaneously and lazily...
like it might be reading a proper fold-out
of a sunday newspaper in england...
a harem for each time i ****** off
and performed a genocide into a tissue
on the throne of thrones...
and subsequently took a shower having
simultaneously taken a ****...
and all things remained swan-esque:
monogamous: or waiting for her to come
to aged mid-life and in crisis...

what with: the children or the cats?
the cats or the grandchildren?
i have yet to come across a grave with
an epitaph...
                        again... some reading into:
marquis de sade: i'm waiting for my libido
to fizzle out... otherwise what shame
is there... when i'd need a harem...
a solo project doesn't even help the matters...
so what shame is there:
it's hardly going to turn a profit
if i plug in... **** please oh please
myself on cam in a sultry room...

last time i heard: all that's needed is a toilet
and a screaming ****...
there's no need to broadcast the whole affair...
then again... this was only going
to be a critique of the haig club whiskey...
sold in purple glass bottles...
over-priced...

in a love paralysis... esp. concerning
the "enchanted" periods of lapse of attention
to mind the and any details...

that the monolingual will play a game
of scrabble or solve a crossword puzzle
is his testament to not bothering to learn
a second language...
the bilingual schizoid debate...
or no debate...
                    
a bed fit for two... but then my shadow is
a glutton and a miser and a...
everything that's supposed to be scortched
under the sun...
melted from sand to somehow make glass...
coy fear: the music of...
leaving vacuums and absences...
and cringe...

                     if this was only ever easy...
i'd write this to later don a niqab...
         but lucky me there's a difference between
the french public intellectual...
and an english public intellectual...
of the latter: the public yet not aware of
media scorn... "free media"...
as free as tabloid papers come tomorrow...

a swift hand on democracy... a quick shuffle...
a bit like an iron grip in autocracy...
as long as there's no focus...
no trained eye... a mirage of a "passing of power"...

how overtly faux pas politico of moi...

                   lazily creeping toward golgotha...
and all those exhausted images...
a richard broutigan would call it:
slouching toward...
                       that others live the fullest
and their lovliest...
that they have teeth and grit and sandpaper's
worth of skin to itch a sketch with...
applause! applause!

jerks off every night...
but never makes a single buck from it...
as "others" might... doing it before a camera...
then again: *** is not exactly a flick
light switch either...
neurological patterns and what not...
the lost cinema - the everyday cinema -
the holy trinity of **** **** and *****...
the genocide of scrambled eggs with no yoke...

otherwise know as liberation
from not being circumcised...
                            and no other crescent motiff.

you don't sell whiskey in purple glass bottles!
over-priced, an apology to ms. amber,
outside the bedroom there's still the obvious chance
of keeping up with...
the queue at a supermarket cashier's...
there's the polka-dotted umbrella...
there's the luftwaffe precision pigeon
dropping a proper blitz "cranium" on
a bowler hat in trafalgar sq....
                     there's all this tsunami of the mundane
that keeps the clock a worthwhile
artefact to keep to mind the horizons and
pitfalls of a single day...

call it the heart of the house: a clock...
call it an itchy hand when the trouser pockets
are empty...
call it a *** note...
my god... a return to a formality of language
via a dear sir, letter...

       none of this is to be minded as:
yours sincerely / faithfully.
Zoe Roberts Mar 2020
(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)

You will have to stay home, sister.
You will charge up, tune in, drop out of all activities.
You will scroll through memes, trawl the news,
Skip the tea, you're running low.

The epidemic will be endlessly televised.

The epidemic will be brought to you in a trillion parts,
With declining commercial interruption.

The epidemic will show you pictures of Trump and Boris blithering,
Dreaming of fried chicken at the end of televisation,
"Oka-a-ay...".
"You are a terrible reporter!"

NHS-badged Hancock will look the part,
But cannot answer the question
Should I look after my sick self-isolated seventyish neighbour?

Fauci facepalms
And is gone.

Watch out, guys.
The epidemic will be televised.

The Epidemic (starring Tom Hanks) will not be brought to you on the big screen.
There will be no big screen.
The Epidemic will not play Glasto
Lit by 300,000 Androids.

The epidemic will be brought to you by friends and strangers.
The epidemic will be televised.

The epidemic will not inject fat into your posterior.
You will not need to shave or deodorise.
As it turns out, you are not worth that expensive holiday.
The epidemic will make you a bedroom star
Vlogging your incarceration to ten followers.

The epidemic will be televised.

There will be pictures of coughing queues at supermarkets
Toilet roll riots, thermometer wars.
There will be pictures of you and your best mate
Pushing that cart down the block,
Packed with Branston Pickle baked beans
Though you posted fifty times online about hoarding.
You will not have dressed for the occasion.

You will not care who wins Love Island.
You will not care who wins The Great British Bake Off.
Eastenders will be cancelled
After 35 years of continuous drama.

You will dodge the police for a quiet walk
On a brighter day.

The epidemic will be televised.

Reporters will cough.
Ministers will be replaced
Suddenly
Parliament will be suspended.
Politics will cease to be televised.

The epidemic will be right back, after a message.

You will have to worry about a germ in your bathroom,
Your food supply, the tiger in your tank, your loved ones,
Whether, if you cease to breathe, there will be a ventilator.

You will consider getting in the driver's seat.
Where to go?

Would you like to see your mother?
Would you like to cross a border?

The Caravan Park is occupied
By the Military.

Slowly, slowly
The screens will darken.

The epidemic will no longer be televised.

The Epidemic is not a game.  You cannot return to a previous Save.

The epidemic is live.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
so much of sudoku is focused around an optical
illusion,
   it's sometimes becomes so obvious as to how
it was originally conjured -
  and most of the time, the "logic" behind it is
like mining,
        or having a blind-spot -
or the ontology of electrons:
  different when unobserved, and once more
different when observed,
     but as ever: the most pleasurable 5 / 10
minutes of the day...
                    given that there is but one solution...
but i still can't get over the fact that i can
conjure as many words as i do:
and still be a complete ******* at crosswords...
perhaps the crosswords i solve are already
in my head, and the fact that i hate
basis of crossword clues focusing on thesaurus
usage...
  or how crossword "clues" are cryptic
dictionary definitions...
     or maybe it's as simple as: i see blue -
i call it blue... i don't meddle with azure or
sapphire.
   the title? how do i continue to not feel
being unnerved hearing of these internet success
stories via vlogging?
  i tend to forage in the digital amazon to find
something as obscure as what i spew...
and you'd be right to call this german artist
making "******" techno music,
but that depends on the context...
         there are two tier of music -
the ones you enjoy & relax to & the same type
that allows you to be absent-minded with,
but there's also the type of music that's
a focus-tool...
        it has to almost represent a drone of a wasp
hive drill, it has to be crude, highly repetitive,
and it will always, for some strange reason,
always keep you honing on a target...
   so, what the difference between a cis bull
and a gay bull? the gay one charged at pink.
perfect example being the german artist
wumpscut...
             it's the sort of music they'd play in
auschwitz if the chimney smoke signals could
be seen again... and if schubert wasn't around,
or brahms, or mahler for that matter...
such serene music as the backdrop to such
horrors... oh, and of course that observation -
how the english love to craft surds out of letters,
silence certain particular examples,
  for example: the latter - ma(h)ler -
but of course that requires rejecting the clear
syllable intake, and the tetragrammaton,
with a little something to ***** the word up...
        diacritical indicators of the "missing" letter...
     i.e. māler...
              hey, it rains from above,
   i've never seen the babylonian rain coming from
the puddles and the rivers and the seas
doing the laid on the ground clouds of rain;
but some music is just like that,
i can admit that in the 20th century classical music
was what the 21st century has provided -
the music you work under, industrial, techno,
call it cheap, call it whatever you want,
but i bet you can't remember the last time
you heard a crow croak, a magpie cackle,
or an owl coo at night, right?
       notably? wumpscut's -
     madman szpital (skon remix) -
  and yes, the title refers to the phrase in the song,
for a german artist to use a slavic
     tongue, my, what an oyster...
           nie przyjęty do szpitala?
   it just means: not admitted to the hospital,
obviously the hospital in question refers to
a psychiatric one;
and yes, it's not a music i particularly enjoy,
but it adds the dynamics of a horse
being attired in shutters -
    the horse that just sees straight and not
to either side, and just gallops,
  until he either reaches the finish line,
      or collapses, exhausted prior to finishing
a race...
         and you will find the most focus
when writing / to write, in the music genre you
most dislike...
          and no, pop is not some shameful
little secret as if it might be a castrato take on
s & m and latex being involved in your *** life...
not in writing, that is.

— The End —