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Ari  Feb 2010
In Philadelphia
Ari Feb 2010
there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia
My best Ginsberg impression.
Jacob Oates Oct 2012
Let me frame this aimless persuasion to flame me right til the day I’m famous

Ignoramus, who is brainless, will be met with a death that’s painless

while the critics statistics are met with verbal ballistics

that due to rapid linguistics make her go

“that man’s ****”

Undiscovered emanation of a wave

across the nation

will by false-
hoods
deci
mation
prove that
you can’t
best me
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2017
believe me, you grow out of it
(*******),
   you reach the natural conclusion
as women do,
    experiencing menopause,
your's the least actrattive cunterpart,
no choice...
          you just grow out of it...
you just get bored
                       you just grow out of it...
it literally become a case of
   huh?
     yep, it becomes a hmm equation...
and if you're not married,
  5p.m. feels like 9a.m.,
                         the **** is going on?
fyck, uleterior motive for spelling
   thick...
           so what the fyck's going on?
pop culture... fuckle me...
                   send some more sleeping
pills my way,
    so i can pretend to be in a
heavyweight boxing match
         fighting both klitschkos
   at the same time, in street fighter mode
of pretending to be blanka /
            zangief / vega?
    i'd **** over him
               any-day-of-the-week,
such **** ******* /
     dhalsim - mr. stretch-armstrong /
                           mr. fantastic...
tekken never conjures up
an equation
      that music does
   i.e. the beatles (street fighter)
vs. the rolling stones (mortal kombat)...
tekken never really made it
         for "equality" status:
                        equal status, i get it;
nonetheless, men tend to grow
out of the practice of *******,
  just like women
   are automated to experience
menopause...
                       you just get bored
of the hand as ****...
                       d'uh dummy dum dum
+ a mongolian harmonica
    (index moving up & down
with the lips perforking
          the motorboat effect,
encapsulated within the brrrrrrrrr;
sure, the missing trill of the r in english...
    and there are no diacritic indicators
that the letter ought to be the sole-source
of vibration...
           hence no roll with the umlaut ä -
   sounds like chinese wow wow wow yo
  boat...
             yoyo that ****?
      count that as two:
          hämmer, i.e. haamer...
          i.e. hāmmer...
              or ha'mmer... so what's with
the trigonometry of the m?
  how many more times do you have
to wave a goodbye?      
                  but the scandi- version?
middle-class english,
   i love their slang,
        they slang a longer word into
a shorter word,
   but never bother to adffix a hyphen
for invigorative measures...
    it always seems to be: oxford approved;
if americans are yanks...
                   the british? wanks;
jiggy-jiggy-mah-jig.
         totality bound by sources found
    in either peckham or hackney;
oh right, the roll...
  an aangstroom, i.e.  ångström...
                    linguistic ballistics...
        **** gets funnier when writing fiction,
the irish and the slav prefer the hyphen
of differentiation in a convo, i.e.
  - and so
- so what?
the post-germanic tribes of anglo saxons and
americans?
    they prefer the inverted commas
and the he said...
                          e.g. "i was saying," he said.
yes, i know that's a fictional character
"speaking",
     but you could at least count,
   toward expressing the correct arithmetic,
i.e. 'i was saying,' he said;
                            yes,
i know no one was saying anything,
             you were thinking someone
was saying something you "said"...
          so why was it never the irony of "citing"
with only two index fingers,
   as opposed to
         two index and two middle fingers?
i swear to god, that's not how
you quote...
                    if you're ever going to quote;
it can only mean
   a beginning of ambiguity,
   by invoking "     ", you're making war
on the thesaurus.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
you know what i find funny? the phrase: i could eat you. juxtaposing vide cor meum against... this is the part where punctuation marks are never collision prone diacritical marks... but then again, there's that dietary joke... i could eat you... dependence on your bones not being properly disavowed within a langoustine broth... and there you are: a grey area mindful of Stalin... *****! i'm trying to humanise ******, stop interrupting! where once a moths' flutter, later a rainbow in the nacht! mind that niqab... nicht would mean nothing. some insinuated cappuchino, some cackles... some said cutie-pies invoking rouge cheeks... every time i watch these culinary shows i get thinking about cannibalism to counter veganism... and then i laugh... i don't want to find stinking socks and political correctness as "my way, did it to suit Lascaux cavern graffiti"... i preferred wanking than keeping up with women... it's the song i heard before lambs stiffened and muslims became muslims, and falafel was mince... ******, get under the hosepipe and you're there, all freely gagging for the fizz... a touch of tinsel... vide cor meum... return of policy... as half-heartfelt kaleidoscope returning to define a rainbow... i love that phrase given the palette opportunity... i could eat you. it's the demonic encouragement that solidifies the stench into what's to be seasoned properly... i don't know.. the phrasing: i could eat you sounds more formidable in delayed practice than: i can **** you... plus the gazpacho... which means: Batman ate cold cauliflower soup and slurred to slurp the question: but it's cold? Baldwin replied: it's supposed to be! they said orthography as a rigidness of aesthetic, i said... that's questionable whether any is applicable, given we're talking about graffiti.

i got tired of sensing other people's jealousy,
and tried to love them,
which ended up to be as much as a matrimony
toward one woman, ambition-bound
to incarnate the matrimony of swans...
  and the poor old ******, left to fantasy in
his days as a widower...
   every time i look at a lonely swans
i try to duck-quack the thing into existence...
            but there are variation of marriage...
a west london accountant can speak terrible
crap against an ethnicity i try to not identify with...
but i am courageously borne from,
    and therefore have to express some affiliation...
as a matter of principle...
  i rather not, but iu must, even though i sprechen
a host tongue... and am, therefore,
embedded with claims of socialite elitism...
                 but then i compare...
and these these comparisons are the due phrase...
Marilyn Manson's *a minute of decay

is a chance to hear the bass guitar overpower
           the drums... a bit like a culinary pistachio
moment in a risotto...
   i want room to breathe in!
     i want vaughan williams' fantasia on a theme
by thomas tallis... i sanctify the need
   for prokofiev's lieutenant kíjé's suite...
(dots are optional, the syllables aren't,
a classical dot above the iota might revel in
being the defining moment of tonguing /
dissecting a word... but it doesn't have to be so)
i need air to breath in, a moment to whimper...
why do the **** love Chopin and not Liszt?
   a bid ******* odd... i don't like either Chopin
or Liszt... because as Kaiser Yoseph said
in amadeus... to many notes...
and i agree... vivaldi made violins into cherub
       pumpernickle sparrows -
you danced, you joyed, you came across St. Vitus' dance...
   you were doing arithmetic as concord speed
within a framework of even (white) and odd (black)
numbers... once you played the nocturnal Fabergé -
someone suggested you move the ******
  goose to the Hermitage, and frame it!
why are the Japanese are the only Europeans in Asia...
      never mind, they just are,
hence they compete for playing Chopin like they consider
sushi to be a culinary exception of the tartar -
minus the influence, obviously, hence the stress to
impose Chopin... but never Liszt... odd...
          template virtuoso and you think of Liszt
than you might conjure Chopin...
           better than that... conjure champagne
bottles blundering to the volcano's worth of fizz...
still... the Japanese are a curiosity...
first of all: they abide by Chopin and chopsticks
not being utilised when gobbling sushi...
   they have the ambassadors of kimono,
samurai, origami, karaoke, bonßai (zye, rye),
          Fukushima... Hiroshima... yep, that place
were stanley lee derived the concept of x-men...
          still, they have permanent ambassadors in
opur midsts... words that can't be "translated" due
to etymological puritanism...
       finally the Portuguese sailed away, and founded
Brazil on the promise of an infinite supply of toothpicks
from the Amazon -
or? hai sensei!           hatch that with the catchphrase:
     kajagoogoo: shy-shy, hush-hush, eye-to-eye.
          we're storming the labyrinth right not,
and i still can't believe that poetry revolves around
the rhythm of rhyme... play any ping-pong, lately?
     no wonder poetry is a peacocking dollop
of clogged-up cow dung... it's just asking
for a *****-slap in a playground.
           but why Chopin and not Liszt?
the **** are what Napoleon was to the Duchy of
Warsaw... they love that arithmetic of
a pebble-dasher's *******...
       wet dreams... some authentic curiosities of
civilisation still have them... i wouldn't recommend
listening to them recounting the fables, personally...
i'd listen in on the succubus jerking them off...
  and just recently i was walking the deaf streets at
night with a bottle of beer and felt the bottle
of beer almost being tugged from my hand...
  and some say that eating a woman's umbilical-chord
is what's necessary to live as a man to later
sing some aria; or like drinking a pregnant woman's
**** will ensure you don't become myopic...
             i don't like Chopin,
i don't like Liszt either... i want a room, and a chance
to breathe... at the end of the classical expression
summarising the wind, we had a return
to the rooting in Africa... earthly delights
and a grumbling stomach in need of feeding,
  jazz did the work for us, jazz still had
an orchestral element to add a Lacan of all things
worthy of deconstruction...
       but then the French came along and shoved
fondue into our ears... and we said
alight with an eureka moment... pop!
             n'ah... the moment when the bass overpowers
the drums... i really have this wild fascination
with the bass guitar...
                 because i don't get Mozart,
and i do think that Handel did much more than
even the sacrificial lamb that Beethoven is...
                  listen... poetry doesn't have to be
music... rhyming is ping-pong anyway...
but as long as you feel in debt concerning music,
the music will come on its own accord...
today i was rattled by a mix of dub (without a step)
and beck's odelay... cruise-missile dylan...
give or take...
      well, given the italicised pr.s. (pre scriptum) -
much later an aged blonde boasted about snorkeling
******* and young ****... and missing out
when she teased me coming back to her abode...
           moth steals from a butterfly,
butterfly never turns into a daisy...
                       you're still a **** and i'm about
half of the total worth of being a ****...
which makes as equal... or queue more.
           variably condoned to be synonym with
mosque...  but i said mannequin...
     it's this **** with the five a day....
Christendom mentioned fruit & veg...
Islam mentioned variations of a murmur...
   is prayer classified as fruit, or vegetable?
you're as bewildered as i am...
   i too thought tomato is a fruit...
turns out it's a vegetable...
primarily due to basil, feta, and the mediterranean.
               herring belong in the baltic,
******* attempting that sort of ballistics...
ask about the relationship between
              a. yan sobieski
         b. ******
                    c. window on arabia (vienna,
counter st. petersburg) -
     oh you'll get many thanks...
sure... you'll end up becoming assured
that dogs don't need petting, but training,
and that you have to make all friends bound
to be kenneled, because they won't learn otherwise;
it's a bit sad...
          for about a minute...
                   you tried being peace-abiding,
peace-mindful...
   you wanted to state compassion...
  in the end people need a slap... or as 2000 years of
history proved... a crucifix.
Erika Oct 2017
I woke up at 4 am
to the news of a mass shooting,
in Las Vegas.

It makes me sick,
that this is the kind of place
my kids will grow up in.

Now I just wonder,
has it always been this way?

When we were kids,
did our parents just cover our eyes,
and hide our face?

Or is all this ****,
this negative energy,

the beginning of an America

that's far more sinister?


It will be hard,
but we have to fix it.

I refuse to let my kids grow up
worried about ballistics.
Please Pray for the lives lost, the injured, the damaged, and the broken souls who thought taking lives was the answer, even though it never is.
Gabriel burnS Jun 2017
Out of the blue
And into the black
A thought passed through my head
It was you who crossed my heart
And went right out
The exit wound
Leila  Apr 2013
Ballistics
Leila Apr 2013
Once you've lost love,
loving is never the same thereafter.
You'll cherish more your laughter.
You'll think differently when you see a man.
His looks will go through you like a bullet through your heart.
Leila  May 2014
Ballistics
Leila May 2014
Once you've lost love,
loving is never the same thereafter.
You'll cherish more your laughter,
you'll think differently when you see a man,
his looks will go through you like a bullet through your heart.
There's an entire field of math
that investigates how fast
things move, one with respect another.
From hydraulics to ballistics,
to scheduling and logistics,
to expected birth rates -
healthy babies, happy mothers.
You can model how disease
moves through a populace with ease
or with diff'culty, as coefficients vary,
how heat and energies diffuse,
or how quickly I will lose
your rapt attention, if I choose,
choose to carry,
always carry,
  carry on the way I do.
If I carry,
always carry on,
  to interest just a few.
But hey.
A passion's still a passion
no matter what you're drawn to.

And with some level of abstraction,
maybe we could find an action,
a reaction,
  an expansion
that could yield a change or two.
Piece together some firm notion,
quantify that art in motion,
brew that bubbling new potion
that can build a better view.

Because there's got to be some level
where preconceptions start to end.
Where the Bell curve starts to bevel,
where your mind begins to bend.
Where names and labels scatter free;
it doesn't matter what you do.
Where fin'lly I can just be me,
where you can just be you.

Because it all comes back to how we move,
one with respect another,
always acting as behooves
someone with our label's cover.
Father, mother.
Sister, brother.
  Pusher, shover.
   Friend and lover.
Villain, hero.
Dime or zero.
  Caesar, Nero,
or just a guy.
A ****, a bro
a ****, a **
The man who knows
every disguise.
Mathematician,
a physician,
  a scared little boy wishin'
  on a shootin' star swishin'
long across a midnight sky.
Theatrical protagonist.
Can you start to get the jyst?
We've got so many roles to play.
Who do we want to be today?
  Just who looks back behind our eyes?

A Freedom Fighter
Wrong righter
Fire started
Broken hearter
Wallet stealer
Dope dealer
  Narc
  Cop
STOP!
For God's sake,
let it stop.

I've got too many roles to fill.
Just can't chill.
Can't calm down,
can't come around.
I'm so tired,
I'm so wired,
  I'm so scared of gettin' fired.
So much **** piles up.
Please, Barkeep, one more in my cup.
  And crank those ******' dials up.
Make chaotic volume flood,
'til the sound of pounding blood
  in my ears becomes a mud
layered thick around the brain,
until that **** that's so insane,
  becomes labeled as mundane.
Betrayal.  ******.  War.
Ya know, I've seen it all before.
  And I'd expect we'll see some more.
But that's okay.
I can breathe.
I'm listed here as understanding.
It's expected.
Let it go.
I'm listed here as undemanding.

It was for a blessing's name
that Cain betrayed his brother.
So becomes our choice of movement,
one with respect another.
Stationary, if not stable,
names fighting to define
people willing, if not able,
to leave their names' confines.

I know it could be simple
if we put our names to rest,
but like some aggravated pimple
grows my own list to contest.
I'm still a lover unrequited.
Still the guy who's ever-slighted,
I've got my Fightin' Irish side;
got both the drinker and his pride.
I still speak my simple credo,
have a Gemini's libido.
And by chivalry's demand,
will keep on offering my hand,
  knowing full well that you will stand
without assistance,
and insistence
that you don't need help from a man.

It gets out of hand so quickly
trying to cultivate ourselves
into what we think we should be.
We wind up bring off the shelves
more than we bargained for
and in the end,
the labels wind up wrong.
While well-intended
all we ended up with
is a spoiled song.

It started out four hands together
plucking out a little tune.
Silv'ry chords you sent to heaven
on a morning come too soon.
But the motif
stolen by the thief
of our own grand delusions,
Our minds,
just as we trained them,
racing off to draw conclusions...

What was once upon a time
beautiful simplicity
became muddled by the noise
of the entire symphony.
The blowing brass and sawing strings
of complicated history
confuse the senses, turn our tune into
a blurred cacophony.

And so we quit that silly game,
'cause it could never be the same
after we banished every name
except our own.
Then we could be
free from confinement on the "who,"
the "what," the "why" of what we do.
with me just me, and you just you.

So it is shown.
Q.E.D.

— The End —