Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
I'm on a train.

One of those red ones with black trimmed windows you can imagine rolling through the suburbs on the way to NYC. Not a subway car but a classier vintage with proper rows of cushioned seats and a lever to pull if there is an emergency. There are sparse shrubberies on one side of the tracks and the ocean on the other. Young trees and bushes stroll by.  A little wind is pushing off the ocean, massaging the car ever so gently back and forth as we move along. A gentle click-clack is on the tips of our ears.

We got on together. I hadn't known you for very long but the connection was stronger than anything I had ever felt or have since. You practically sat on top of me for the first few miles. Couldn't keep your hands off me,  staring in my eyes like you were searching for something lost but you couldn't remember what. The edges of your lips turned upwards permanently as if you were always at the verge of a laugh. You interlaced my fingers with yours and held on like you would be ripped away if your grip loosened for even a second. Slender fingers holding so tightly that they were becoming red.

You were excited to to be riding with me, about where we were going and all the things we would do when we got there. I would see you peer out of the corner of your eye, then lean over to brush your soft cheek against my budding stubble. Kissing and gently biting my lips insatiably. The suns rays coming in at an angle and lighting up your perfect smile and dimple.

I had to remind you we were in public.

I was lost in your blonde curls and the incense of your neck. I had fallen incredibly hard and so fast that my face hurt from smiling and my heart beat with vibrations I had never known. Not even a whiff of anxiety or neurosis. Some of the best memories of my life, as fleeting as they turned out to be.

I yawned and you put your finger in my mouth. I bent over to tie my shoe and you would poke my **** and laugh with your own reflection in the window, like this was the first and best joke of all time. Maybe it was and maybe it is.

The waiter came and informed us that a thing called "the bar car" existed. We both jumped at the idea. I didn't exactly notice at the time, during our excitement, but that's when the train started going faster and everything out the windows began to blur.

The bar car was a wild ride and we took advantage of our lo'cal. All kinds of fine wine, liquors and illicit substances were available. We tried them all. You were beautiful, your laugh infecting everyone around you, I was charming and held a captive audience.   It was a dark, loud and glorious blur. We were the life of the party and it chugged on till dawn.

We woke up in our seats, disheveled and discombobulated. It was dark out already. Did we sleep through the entire day? The train was slowing down, maybe approaching a station. The party was amazing but we were certainly paying the price for the black out. You moved over to the seat across from me to have some more space and lay down. I saw myself in the reflection. My hat, charm and smile from the night before had vanished. I must have left them in the bar car the night before.
      You had changed, beauty uninterrupted but different somehow. I couldn't put my finger on it. Irritated maybe? I invited you to cuddle and battle the hangover together but you ignored me. Like you couldn't hear me or didn't want to. I decided to let you be.

I got up to use the bathroom and thought I would go look for my scattered belongings. Maybe I could find a scrap of leftover dignity while you rested. I inquired to the conductor who directed me to the bartender in the bar car. He hadn't changed a bit, somehow untouched and unaffected by last nights antics that had effected me so dramatically.  Same black suspenders and white pressed shirt with impeccably slicked hair. I asked him what happened and if I had an open tab. While slowly polishing a rocks glass he looked up and made eye contact for a split second before looking away.
He said:  "Oh the bar car takes its toll. In the end we all end up paying one way or another". I still don't know what he meant by that or if he knew.
      I asked him if he found my hat and he said he would check the camera. We walked in to a small back room, while he was reviewing the tape, over his shoulder I noticed a tragedy.

We were drunk. I was going on to a group of new friends on one side of the bar, they were hanging on my words and I was eagerly explaining whatever nonsense they were drooling over. You were in the corner wearing that red dress I love, with your hair up in a tight bun. A few curls had escaped and brushed your high cheekbones, a thin line of pearls dancing delicately across your perfectly symmetrical collar. You were stunning and inebriated, swaying with each bump and motion of the train. A man wearing my hat put his hand on your side to keep you from swaying over and then he left it there.
I took a sharp breath.

It looked like you put your hand on his hand to move it but then it stayed and you both swayed together. As the air left my lungs and the blood drained out of my face I watched your lips touch the strangers. A small piece of my soul slipped away forever. I couldn't watch any further. When I asked the bartender how long it went on he fidgeted for a moment and uncomfortably muttered "quite some time". I never found my hat or the other part of me that left that day.  

The train slowed. I walked to the back, as far away from you as I could get, in utter disbelief. How could you? I thought to myself.
I mourned the loss of the you as I knew you yesterday, quietly and to myself. A tear  escaped my eye and rolled down my now fully formed stubble as I fell in to a random seat in mild shock. There were a few passengers back there so I had to pull together relatively quickly. After gaining some composure I knew it was time to get off. I knew we could never get back to yesterday morning though I would have said or done anything to do so.

The train had stopped. I went back to my seat and you were sleeping. I took my coat and gathered my things. The conductor looked at me confused as to why I would leave something so magnificent, I assume he had no idea what had transpired.   

I walked to the rear of the car and slid the door open slower than required. I stepped to the stairs and put one foot down on the step and the other on the ground. I stopped, rooted with my hand on the railing, lingering between two very different paths.
     I knew that it was time to get off, I knew this was the sensible thing to do, that I couldn't get past this offense regardless of how I had felt earlier the day before. The whistle screamed from the locomotive. The conductor looked at me and shook his head, I'm not sure if he was trying to tell me to stay or go but a decision had to be made.

The train lurched forward and I watched as the station slip away slowly. I sat in between the cars for a while and watched the ocean and birds. With a heavy heart and shoes I walked back to my seat. You were waiting. Crying. You knew. The bartender had told you. You didn't mean do do it, didn't realize what you were doing and thought it was me. He was wearing my hat and the whole world was blurry and dark.

I believed you. Self anguish mixed with alcohol was dripping from your pores. I knew you didn't mean it and were drunk, but could I ever forgive you or trust you again?

I loved you still.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection, a weaker version of myself looked back. As if an invisible chip in my teeth had developed and my shoulders lowered. The charming, confident man from the bar car the day before had been replaced. Something was off but not enough for anyone else to notice, just enough to know a change has happened.
       The train started to pick up speed again as we distanced ourselves from the station.  I second guessed my decision to stay but I didn't look back.

I found the man with my hat and punished him with a few blows in the dark. He knew he ****** up, apologized and took the beating like a man. I never got the hat back.

The engineer announced that we would be going through a tunnel soon and to turn on our lights and keep our hands in the windows.

It would be dark.  

We stayed away from the bar car for a while but the draw was irresistible. After a few hours we were there again but you never left my side.  Then you did. I was looking for you but you would disappear and not answer me when I called you name. The tunnel went deeper and darker and I didn't know where you were and I suspected you liked it that way. The train began to slow down again as we exited the tunnel.

I finally found you back at our seat, you had moved one row away from me. I asked you to come back, tried to hold your hands but you pulled away with vehemence. When I came back from the bathroom you had moved another row farther.
I knew I was losing you.
I begged you to return but you told me calmly that it was time for you to get off. At some point in the tunnel you had decided that you didn't want to go anymore . Your mind was made. You were going to catch another train at the next station.

When the train stopped I thought for sure you would reconsider but you didn't. Didn't even give it a thought. You just grabbed your coat and hat with one big bag under your arm. You kissed me on the cheek like a french stranger and were off. Going somewhere else on a different train. Just like that.

I rode the rails for quite some time by myself , many people getting on and getting off, passing me by. Every once in a while I would think I saw you at a station or in a **** though the window of another train. I often thought I could smell you but when I breathed deeper it was always gone. A ghost dancing on the edge of my senses.

A young girl in a headband got on the train. She was listening to headphones and dancing to herself as she bobbed along. She sat down in the seat next to me flashing a smile. She had a wedding ring on and I dismissed her immediately.  She didn't move from the seat or stop glancing my way. Eventually she confessed that she wanted to talk. I told her I wasn't interested but she persisted.  I hadn't talked to anyone on the train for quite some time and after some more mild persistence, I gave in.

We had a lot in common. We were both riding alone, desperately wanted attention and were thrilled to receive some.  After a few laughs she slid her hand in to mine and interlaced her fingers. I left it there. It was warm, comforting and wrong. She was married but I had been riding alone so long it felt good to have some company. She stayed and we talked. She was broken and I had a knack for fixing things. After a few hours of dramatic conversation I fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.

When I woke up  the train was flying up the track on the side of a mountain. Trees and rocks were a blur of green and grey. The engineer must be trying to make up for lost time I thought to myself.

The girl was asleep with her head on my lap. I looked down at her hand and the rings were gone. I woke her briefly to ask where they went. She said she didn't need them anymore and had thrown  them out the window.  She could of sold them, I said, but she said she just wanted them gone so she could be mine and fell back to sleep.  All of a sudden I couldn't breath. This train was roaring down the tracks, the once gentle click clack had become a loud hum. Suddenly too loud. This girl in my lap who had just gotten on the train wanted to stay. I considered her for a while as she looked up at me with big blue eyes, shining and wet, like a puppy in the shelter, terrified of rejection and desperate to be adopted.

At the peak of the mountain, just when the train began to even out, you waltzed back in to the car with a champagne flute in one hand and your bag in the other.

I don't know when or where you got back on, must have been a few stations ago when I stopped looking for you. Maybe you were wearing a disguise, who knows what you had been up to while you were gone. I'm not sure how long you were away but it was quite some time. That you had been through something was obvious, a new wrinkle had formed on your brow and you're once confident stride had changed to a cautious stroll. What actually happened out there I don't know.  I never asked and I don't want answers.

You looked at me and smiled. It was good to see that smile, like sun on my face on a brisk day.  You took a step toward me and then I looked down in my lap at the girl at the same time you did. I looked up. You and your smile were gone.

Everything I had begun to feel for this broken, head banded girl in my lap dried up like a puddle in  the dessert.  I quietly and gently nudged her awake and told her I had to use the bathroom. She put her head down on my coat and fell back into what ever trance she had been in, eyelids gently fluttering, eyes searching beneath them for what I would never give her.

I dashed up the isle and threw open the door, almost shattering the glass. The conductor glared at me and rolled his eyes as I barged past to the space between the cars.

There you were. Standing on the stairs with your head out the opening. The wind was blowing your perfectly formed curls around your head like a blonde explosion of familiarity. I yelled your name and you dove in to me. My senses erupted, my mind went numb as the train was nearing another station and I inhaled your essence greedily.

We moved to another car. I abandoned my coat with the married girl and never looked back. I hope she found what she was looking for. I  never could have been the answer she was so desperately seeking but I know I  helped steer her towards it.

You told me you had encountered some other people out there on the rails and they had reminded you of what we had when we first left the station. I never forgot.  

The train started to rock and get going again. We were back in the bar car and starting to brown out. We had to get off of this train right ******* now. In a desperate moment we looked at each other and put our hands, together, on the emergency brake cord. I looked in your eyes with your hand on top of mine. You kissed me while yanking down on the cord. Time slowed, the breaks squealed and everything exploded throwing luggage, people and the entire contents of the bar car in to a nondiscriminatory chaos . We got up off the ground, ran to the end of the car, dove off the side in to a soft patch of grass and rolled down a small incline. We watched as the conductor sifted through  the mess and interrogated the passengers, trying to ferret out the party responsible for pulling the brake. He spotted us off the side of the tracks and shook his fist while shouting every conceivable obscenity combination.

We laughed, held each other in the grass and kissed deeply.

We watched the train pick up speed and disappear in to the hills as relief spread over me.

You interlaced your fingers in to mine and we both looked out to where the tracks disappeared into the horizon, wondering how far of a walk it was to the next station.
Joseph Childress Sep 2010
Discombobulated...

"Bob! You late Again!?"
Its not
A statement
You can make
To make her change
The date again

Happy Belated
Birthday celebrations
Embracing
Her forgiveness
As the cure
For your forgets
Forged
Your signature style
Across the lines
Of her smile
As you kiss
With the intent
To signal her bliss
And ignorance

What's in store
For her
Is distortion
This portion of life
Fused with confusion
Contortionist
Twisting
The body
Of lies
With the a prose
That matches
Her pose
Unjustified margins
Never
Crossing the red line
But riding it
Writing with a wit
That could
Split her brain
In half
You call it
The gift a gab

Emotions versus Logic
The verse is
Littered with poetry
Personified
As a woman
Mixed feelings
Remixed
And mastered
To produce
A new product
For you to accept
Instead
You neglect

Her
Collected thoughts
!Implode!
She gathers
The pieces
To gain recollection
Of what happened

To her
To you
To love

She battles
Herself
To win the war
With you

Tie the knot
For christ sake!
Or undue
"To hell
With you!"

She yells
Her voice fails
To really reach you
It takes
Two
To tangle
Not to tango
To tango
Is to dance
And you'd
Miss your step
Every chance
You get

She feels
Obligated
To feel
For her first love
Inoculated
By the drug
That leaves her

Discombobulated...
Follow me @TheInsomaniac
Song one
This is a song about tarzanic love
That subsisted some years ago,
As a love duel between an English girl and an African ogre,
There was an English girl hailing along the banks of river Thames
She had stubbornly refused all offers for marriage,
From all the local English boys, both rich and poor
tall and short, weak or strong, ugly and comely in the eye,
the girl had refused and sternly refused the treats for love,
She was disciplined to her callous pursuit of her dream
to marry a mysterious,fantastic,lively,original and extra-ordinary man,
That no other woman in history of human marriage ever married,
She came from London, near the banks of river Thames,
Her name was Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill, daughter of a peasant,
She came from a humble English family, which hustled often
For food, clothing, and other calls that make one an ordinary British,
She grew up without a local boy friend, anywhere in the English world,
She is the first English girl to knock the age of forty five while a ******,
She never got deflowered in her teens as other English girls usually do
She preserved her purse with maximal carefulness in her wait for a black man,
Her father, of course a peasant, his trade was human barber and horse shearer,
Often asked her what she wants in life before her marriage, which man she really wanted,
Her specification was an open eyesore to her father; no blinkers could stave the father’s pale
For she wanted a black tall man, strong and ruggedly dark in the skin, must own a kingdom,
Fables taken to her from Africa were that such an African man was only one but none else,
His glorious name was Akhatembete kho bwibo khakhalikha no bwoya,
When the English girl heard the chimerical name of her potential husband,
She felt a super bliss in her spine; she yearned for the day of her rendezvous,
She crashed into desperate burning for true English love
With a man with a wonderful name like Akhatembete kho bwibo khakhalikha no bwoya.


Song two

Rumours of this English despair and dilemma for love reached Africa, in the wrong ears,
Not the human ears, but unfortunately the ears of the ogres, seasoned in the evil art,
It was received and treated as classified information among the African ogress,
They prevented this news to leak to African humans at all at all
Lest humans enjoy their human status and enjoy most
The love in the offing from the English girl,
They thus swiftly plotted and ployed
To lure and win the ******
From royal land;
England.




Song three

Firstly, the African ogres recruited one of their own
The most handsome middle aged male ogre, more handsome than all in humanity,
And of course African ogres are beautiful and handsome than African humans, no match,
The ogres are more gifted in stature, physique, eugenics and general overtures
They always outplay African humans on matters of intelligence, they are shrewder,
Ogres are aggressive and swashbuckling in manners; fear is none of their domain
Craft and slyness is their breakfast, super is the result; success, whether pyrrhic or Byronic,
Is their sweetest dish, they then schemed to get the English girl at whatever cost,
They made a move to name one of their fellow ogres the name of dream man;
Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha no bwoya,
Which an English girl wanted,
By viciously naming one of their handsome middle-aged man this name.

Song four

Then they set off 0n foot, from Congo moving to the north towards Europe abode England,
Where the beautiful girl of the times, Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill hail,
They were three of them, walking funnily in cyclopic steps of African ogres,
Keeping themselves humorously high by feigning how they will dupe the girl,
How they will slyly decoy the English village pumpkin of the girl in to their trap,
And effortlessly make her walk on foot from England to Africa, in pursuit of love
On this muse and sweet wistfulness they broke out into loud gewgaws of laughter,
In such emotional bliss they now jump up wildly forgetting about their tails
Which they initially stuffed inside white long trousers, tails now wag and flag crazily,
Feats of such wild emotions gave the ogres superhuman synergy to walk cyclopically,
A couple of their strides made them to cross Uganda, Kenya, Somali, Ethiopia and Egypt
Just but in few days, as sometimes they ran in violent stampedes
Singing in a cryptic language the funny ogres songs;

Dada wu ndolelee!
Dada wu ndolelee!
Kuyuni kwa mnja
Sa kwingile khundilila !

Ehe kuyuni Mulie!
Ehe kuyuni mulie!
Omukhana oyo
Kaloba khuja lilia !
They then laughed loudly, farted cacophonously and jumped wildly, as if possessed,
They used happiness and raucous joy as a strategy to walk miles and miles
Which you cover when moving on foot from Congo to England,
They finally crossed Morocco and walked into Europe,
They by-passed Italy and Spain walking piecemeal
into England, native land of the beautiful girl.

Song  five

When the three ogres reached England, they were all surprised
Every woman and man was white; people of England walked slowly and gently
They made minimum noise, no shouting publicly on the street,
a stark contrast to human behaviour and ogre culture in Africa, very rambunctious,
Before they acclimatized to disorderly life in England, an over-sighted upset befell them
Piling and piling menace of pressure to ****,
Gripped all the three ogre brothers the same time,
None of them had knowledge of municipal utilities,
They all wanted to micturated openly
Had it not been beautiful English girls
Ceaselessly thronging the streets.



Song six

They persevered and moved on in expectation of coming to the end,
Out-skirt of the strange English town so that they can get a woodlot,
From where they could hide behind to do open defecation
All was in vain; they never came to any end of the English town,
Neither did they come by a tumbled-down house
No cul de sac was in sight, only endless highway,
Sandwiched between tall skyscraping buildings,
One of the ogres came up with an idea, to drip the ****
Drop by drop in their *******, as they walk to their destiny,
They all laughed but not loudly, in controlled giggles
And executed the idea minus haste.

Song seven

They finally came down to the banks of river Thames,
Identified the home of Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill
The home had neither main gate nor metallic doors,
They entered the home walking in humble majesty,
Typical of racketeering ogre, in a swindling act,
The home was silent, no one in sight to talk to
The ogres nudged one another, repressing the mirth,
Hunchbacked English lass surfaced, suddenly materialized
Looking with a sparkle in the eye, talking pristine English,
Like that one written by Geoffrey Chaucer, her words were as piffling
As speech of a mad woman at the fish market, ogres looked at her in askance.

Song eight

An ogre with name Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya opened to talk,
Asked the girl where could be the latrine pits, for micturation only,
The hunchbacked lass gave them a direction to the toilets inside the house,
She did it in a full dint of English elegance and gentility,
But all the ogres were discombobulated to their peak
about the English latrine pit inside the house,
they all went into the toilet at the same time,
to the chagrin of the hunchbacked lass
she had never seen such in England
she struggled a lot
to repress her mirth
as the English
never get amused
at folly.




Song nine

It is a tradition among the ogres to ****,
Whenever they are ******* in the African bush,
But now the ogres are in a fix, a beautiful fix of their life
If at all they ****, the flatulent cacophony will be heard outside
By the curious eavesdroppers under the eaves of the house,
They murmured among themselves to tighten their **** muscles
So that they can micturated without usual African accomplice; the tweeee!
All succeeded to manage , other than Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
Who urinated but with a low tziiiiiiii sound from his ***, they didn’t laugh
Ogres walked out of privities relaxed like a catholic faithful swallowing a sacrament,
The hunchback girl ushered them to where they were to sit, in the common room
They all sat with air of calm on their face, Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
led the conversation, by announcing to the girl that he is Victoria’s visitor from Africa,
To which the girl responded with caution that Victoria is at the barbershop,
Giving hand to her father in shearing the horses, and thus she is busy,
No one is allowed to meet her, at that particular hour of the day
But he pleaded to the hunchback girl only to pass tidings to Victoria,
That Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya from Africa
Has arrived and he is yearning to meet her today and now,
The girl went bananas on hearing the name
The hunch on her back visibly shook,
Is like she had heard the name often,
She then became prudent in her senses,
And asked the visitor not to make anything—
Near a cat’s paw out of her person,
She implored the visitor to confirm
if at all he was what he was saying
to which he confirmed in affirmation,
then she went out swiftly
like a tail of the snake,
to pass tidings
to her sister
Victoria.


Song ten
She went out shouting her sister’s name,
A rare case to happen in England,
One to make noise in the broad day light,
With no permission from the local leadership,
She called and ululated Victoria’ name for Victoria to hear
From wherever she was, of which she heard and responded;
What is the matter my dear little sister? What ails you?
Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya is around!
She responded back in voice disturbed by emotional uproar,
What! My sister why do you cheat me in such a day time?
Am not cheating you my sister, he is around sited in our father’s house,
Is he? Have you given him a drink, a sweet European brandy?
My sister I have not, I feared that I may mess up your visitors
With my hunched shoulders, I feared sister forbid,
Ok, I am coming, running there, tell him to be patient,
Let me tell him sister just right now,
And make sure you come before his patience is stretched.





Song eleven

Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill almost went berserk
On getting this good tidings about the watershed presence,
Of the long awaited suitor, her face exploded into vivacity,
Her heart palpitating on imagination of finally getting the husband,
She went out of the barber shop running and ululating,
Leaving her father behind, confounded and agape,
She came running towards her father’s main house
Where the suitor is sited, with the chaperons,
She came kicking her father’s animals to death,
Harvesting each and every fruit, for the suitor,
She did marvel before she reached where the suitor was;
Harvested ten bananas, mangoes and avocadoes,
Plums, pepper, watermelons, lemons and oranges,
She kicked dead five chicken, five goats, rams,
Swine, rabbits, rats, pigeons and hornbills,
When she reached the house, she inquired to know,
Who among them could be the one; Akhatembete Khobwibo
Khakhalikha no bwoya, But her English vocals were not guttural enough,
She instead asked, who among you is a key tempter go weevil car no lawyer?
The decoy ogre promptly responded; here I am the queen of my heart. He stood up,
Victoria took the ogre into her arms, whining; babie! Babie, babie, come!
Victoria carried the ogre swiftly in her arms, to her tidy bed room,
She placed the ogre on her bed, kissed one another at a rate of hundred,
Or more kisses per a minute, the kissing sent both of them crazy, but spiritual craft,
That gave the ogre a boon to maintain some sobriety, but libido of virginity held Victoria
In boonless state of ****** feat, defenseless and impaired in judgment
It extremely beclouded her judgment; she removed and pulled of their clothes,
Libidinous feat blurring her sight from seeing the scarlet tail projecting
From between the buttocks of the ogre, vestige of *******,
She forcefully took the ogre into her arms, putting the ogre between her legs,
The ogre’s uncircumcised ***** effectively penetrated Victoria’s ****** purse,
The ogre broke virginity of Victoria, making her to feel maximum warmth of pleasure
As it released its germinal seed into her body, ecstasy gripped her until she fainted,
The ogre erected more on its first *******; its ***** became more stiff and sharp,
It never pulled out its ***** from the purse of Victoria, instead it introduced further
Deeper and deeper into Victoria’s ******, reaching the ****** depth inside her with gusto,
Victoria screamed, wailed, farted, scratched, threw her neck, kissed crazily and ******,
On the rhythms of the ogre’s waist gyrations, it was maximum pleasure to Victoria,
She reached her second ****** before the ogre; it took further one hour before releasing,
Victoria was beaten; she thought she was not in England in her father’s house
She thought she was in Timbuktu riding on a mosquito to Eldorado,
Where she could not be found by her father whatsoever,
The ogre pulled Victoria up, helped her to dress up,
She begged that they go back to the common room,
Lest her father finds them here, he would quarrel,
They went back to the common room,
Found her father talking to other two ogres,
She shouted to her father before anyone else,
That ‘father I have been showing him around our house,’
‘He has fallen in love with our house; he is passionate about it,’
Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya was shy,
He greeted the father and resumed his chair, with wryly dignity.


Song twelve
An impromptu festival took place,
Fully funded by the father of Victoria,
There was meat of all type from pork to chicken,
Greens were also there in plenty, pepper and watermelons,
Victoria’s mother remembered to prepare tripe of a goat
For the key visitant who was the suitor; Akhatembete,
Food was laid before the ogres to enjoy themselves,
As all others went to the other house for a brainstorming session,
But the hunched backed girl hid herself behind the door,
To admire the food which visitors were devouring,
As she also spied on the table manners of the visitors, for stories to be shared,
Perhaps between herself and her mother, when visitors are gone,
Some sub-human manners unfolded to her as she spied,
One of the ogres swallowed a spoon and a table fork,
And Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
Uncontrollably unstuffed his scarlet tail from the trouser,
The chill crawled up the spine of hunchbacked girl,
She almost shouted from her hideout, but she restrained herself,
She swore to herself to tell her father that the visitors are not humans
They are superhuman, Tarzans or mermaids or the werewolves,
The ogre who swallowed the spoon remorsefully tried to puke it back,
Lest the hosts discover the missing spoon and cause brouhaha,
It was difficult to puke out the spoon; it had already flowed into the stomach,
Victoria, her father, her mother and her friend Anastasia,
Anastasia; another English girl from the neighborhood,
Whom Victoria had fished, to work for her as a best maid, as a chaperon,
Went back to the house where the ogres had already finished eating,
They found ogres sitting idle squirming and flitting in their chairs
As if no food had ever been presented to them in a short while ago,
One ogre even shamelessly yawned, blinking his eyes like a snake,
They all forgot to say thanks for the food, no thanks for lunch,
But instead Akhatembete announced on behalf of other ogres,
That they should be allowed to go as they are late for something,
A behaviour so sub-human, given they were suitors to an English family,
Victoria’s father was uneasy, was irritated but he had no otherwise,
For he was desperate to have her daughter Victoria get married,
He had nothing to say but only to ask his daughter, Victoria,
If she was going right-away with her suitor or not,
To which she violently answered yes I am going with him,
Victoria’s mother kept mum, she only shot miserable glances
From one corner of the house to another, to the ogres also,
She totally said nothing, as Victoria was predictably violent
To any gainsayer in relation to her occasion of the moment,
Victoria’s father wished them all well in their life,
And permitted Victoria to go and have good life,
With Akhatembete, her suitor she had yearned for with equanimity,
Victoria was so confused with joy; her day of marriage is beholden,
She hurriedly packed up as if being chased by a monster,
Ashley Chapman Oct 2017
Feel empty in your post apocalyptic City of Angels,
Where not even your pets are real!
An electric android, a sheep or a frog,
The whir-flutter of micro-electrical wings of a butterfly.

Good, and so you ought.

Now grab the handles of your empathy box,
And in a shared virtual hallucination –
Feel: empathy, depression, pain, delusion and despair,
The outré myriad gifts of consciousness.

Billions of discombobulated and disconnected wrecks:
Adam's sons; Eve's daughters,
And among them simulations too,
Fakes! androids!
A phony circuit of implanted semi-conscious memories,
A hive of neural malaise!
Welcome to our world;
know how dead inside I am.

You, yes, you:

Need a pet to make you more complete?
Maybe you can afford
A Fake Fakir Flake like me who looks like Jude Law,
Sounds like Richard Burton,
And silently romances you like Rudolph Valentino.
Come and stick what’s left of your mind,
In here,
In hair,
Hear her:
har, har, har…

A box of lies...

A voice, Mercer's,
With texture from an age you neither lived in nor dared in:
Al Jerry's, a TV actor,
Droning on in pre-selected tones.

The real thing, the men, the women, the children - their animals -
Made in the wild, wild desert,
In the green pulsing savannah,
On the open crusted sea;
Now too, washed, choked, and drained,
Too many spliced and diced mutations,
Iterating your image:
The thing that was my heart,
My Child, now its imitation.
Performed for Celine's Salon at Gerry's Club, Soho, London and at Time Event Space, Glasgow, April 29, 2022.

This comes from my fascination with Philip K. **** and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In this, his future dystopian vision, androids are retired, a euphemism for terminated, when they have passed their legal age limit after four years. Humans, us, have by now ruined our environment and become enthralled to a false religion, Mercerism , a fabricated make belief, spun by an actor, Al Jerry. The empathy boxes plunge the followers of Mercerism into a shared virtual hallucination. I was also enthralled by Jude Law in AI by Steven Spielberg who gave what I thought was a mesmerising portrait of a *** robot, the ultimate Lothario and so tragically programmed to flaw.

In 2017 Mercerism was the theme of The Tunnel, an art collective to which I was a participator, through poetry.

Then in 2022,I was invited to perform it in Glasgow as part of Celtic tour of Britain for Celine's Salon.

It will soon be published by Wordville Press.

Blade Runner, the film, now Blade Runner 49, is based on this dark interpretation of where we could all be headed.
Raj Arumugam Jun 2013
(1)
There’s one thing I must get off my chest
that’s bothered me now
even 50 years on
with the passage of time –
my English teacher then
she always told me when I grumbled
homework was too difficult,
she’d tell me: “That’s a piece of cake”
And I’d go home discombobulated how
anyone could eat paper
or homework
and she said this not once, but every time:
“It’s a piece of cake”


(2)
And my parents and I looked at it
every which way and from every point of view
and concluded in our Perfect Ancient Native language:
“This English teacher is a loony. She is wooly-headed.
She is the lamb Mary lost, silly and muddle-headed.
How can homework be a piece of cake?
Anyway, we don’t eat cake – we eat samosas.”


(3)
And yet the English teacher would put her nose
up in the air
and remonstrate: “It’s a piece of cake!”

Oh yeah, would you like tea with it?

Now, my parents, bless their Ancient Souls,
have gone on into the next world
And I’m left wondering about the secret madness
of that English teacher
who’d ask me to eat cake when I expressed genuine concern…

Well, my parents have passed on, as I said,
and I’ve moved on
as is plain and radiant to see
to master idioms and vocabulary
Punctuation, the catenative verb and Usage;
and, as for that wooly-headed English teacher,
I’m sure she’s moved on into
a comfortable nuthouse
where the staff makes her eat her cake,
and make her think she can have it too -
cos that’s what they do to nuts, and such instances

(4)
And now that I have got that off my chest,
I can comfortably resume memorizing
Volume 3 of theOxford Dictionary
as  I perambulate
and copy 100 entries from Fowler’s “Modern English Usage”
as I victulate
which is all part of my nightly ritual
since she told me to do so some 50 years ago
(cos I happened to look at her Union Jack knickers
when she sat high on the table, and I stood up *****
cos that's what they made us do in the cinemas)
- and that helps to put me into a state of dormancy, to hibernate
till the sun ushers in a new day for me  –
and a new cake for that wooly-headed English teacher,
she, I can presume with certainty,
elegantly reposed and superannuated


Now, I’m glad I’ve got this off my chest
and mastered my idioms and phrases
and I can go eat my samosas
- don't you think the teacher was mad? -  and by George! -  I'm as sane as King George 3...?
Dondaycee  Jun 2018
Breakthrough
Dondaycee Jun 2018
Why do I have a name?
Why do I feel ashamed?
My skin is darker; kind of black,
I could play the “Why” game and watch the results change into an X looking back,
That’s darker; X squared is smarter than that,
Only with a Y does he search for a trinity in a period for unity, and equate to form,
Yes, I know, I’m speaking as if this information is the norm,
I’ll break it down,
Why do I have a name? I feel obligated to last,
I’m bound by blood; big tree, big three, red ***,
Why do I feel ashamed? Discombobulated because of the past,
Discombobulated,
Cause be: past,
Effect be: last, because my first name took me away from my last,
The irony in me losing my identity and stumbling across DNA so that I could explain how me having red skin was apart of the past,
They asked for my name,
I did not answer,
I do not approve,
They tried to label me: Insane,
I did not attack,
I do not ask; this is my mood,
I do not apply the perception if intuition reply; “data not available”,
That means it does not enter the conception if the logic wasn’t of relevance,
Hesitant, if the manifestations replaceable,
My skin is darker, black,
I was embarrassed to inherit this,
My skin is darker, fact,
Merit in gene pool looping with heritage,
American, as a liability,
Arrogance, it’s sensibility,
Aye Merica, cannabis keeping lies from billy,
Narrowness with the third eye, his sense ability,
Now I could ask why for anything,
And I’ll find the answers when I look back,
Now if I lived in the moment, I would have known everything , I too smart to ever think of sticking to these structures in order to scratch my back,
And if my ego is itching, it’s time for a backpack,
Curiosity; wondering why, had to backtrack,
In third period, he saw her,
Told her back that,
They became one, had a child, another tax bag,
Stability was hard, he spent money,
It didn’t come back,
He cried for God, he was hungry for help; received a PI; this is abstract,
With H in the middle, Phi transitioned circles into spirals, indeed he snapped back,
New lid, imagine looking up and seeing green; snapback,
Did you catch that, how the man’s breakthrough was philosophy,
A philanthropist using philharmonics to express the three in blackjack,
Why play games when we know the outcome?
Like working and supporting economics,
But we all know this experience is not fun,
You’re nobody if you’re not one,
Tried solitude but it’s hard to be spiritual if you’re not one,
Afraid of a breakthrough, so he pulled the trigga,
All that pain because he was just another *****,
Trying on advance shoes won’t make him no quicker,
I’ll be ****** if he lose, we gotta fill the picture,
I’ll be ****** if we lose, we gotta feel the pictures,
Express yourself, invest in health,
We gotta divert from all these written scriptures,
We gotta desert when we see the liquor,
We got a dessert when we see the mixture,
How it’s thicker than DNA, DMT, and Trinity together,
If I relocate promise me you’ll remember me forever,
I went from X and X to X and Y a linear measure,
This androgynous way of perceiving, is how we as a species all come together,
Acceptance is dark and I had a head start,
That’s archetypal for a breakthrough,
Because I’m convinced; I’ve conceived the belief that choice is what makes you,
Choice is what make you,
Choice is what made you,
Understanding choice is the breakthrough.
Culpoetry Apr 2014
Discombobulated
beyond a miles’ worth
of snapped and razor-weight
wires, my roots have yellowed
and have split into insanity

My mind is crippled
By conditioning

Corruptive chemicals diffuse
shattering senses, imbalancing,
Dancing in an inverse orbit
Around this crumbling mind
For nausea and disorientation

My mind is crippled yet again
By the **** conditioning
Andrew T Apr 2016
This large square ceiling hanging above my body
is a blank canvass that needs to be painted
with bold strokes and bright colors,
with smooth orange and ocean blue,
rapid pummeling rhythms dictating tone and mood.

I have a pen in my hand that squirts out black bird ink,
but to me it’s a stone sculpting tool that carves deep inside my imagination,
and scoops up newborn thoughts before they disintegrate
when I wake up from my daydream.

So I climb on top of a cocktail chair with malleable
aluminum legs and I attempt to shape the dry whiteness
into something colorful and beautiful.

I want to create beauty because I don’t enjoy surfing the channels of Comcast digital entertainment
having to paddle through the brainwashing
and the ******* and seaweed that washes up
on my hometown shore.

The waves are all the same across the television screen, I am desensitized and numb to the upper class Anglo-Saxons,
who mind-****** my favorite poets and Hip Hop musicians in the mouth, so that they cannot speak with

honesty
and
compassion.

I don’t wonder anymore why some prominent media-figures choke on the microphone; it’s because they have been force-fed
chicken-****
and injected with
snake venom.

That’s why I don’t take all my time of leisure resting back on a tan cushioned boogie-board, riding a cable channel that will not take me anywhere except for an escape from the loneliness of living alone, away from close family and good friends.

That’s why I prefer to sit below a yellow and red pinwheel umbrella and stretch my toes in the wet sand, I don’t even need a beach towel to lie on, and sometimes I just want to sink into the grainy sand
and
forget about time,
forget about love,
and
forget about my reason for being here.

But back to molding a new form of living; that top white wall takes up the majority of my apartment and I think it deserves to be drawn on, painted on, spread with posters of voluptuous artists and cool brooding actors.

A canvass needs to have flesh, just as a skeleton needs meat and skin. I stack my sandy tan sofa cushions one after the other on top of the cocktail chair and I reach up to brush long and wide strokes of bravery and euphoria.

The bristle-tips flicked up specks of green apple paint and sunk deep blotches of red heart into the ceiling.

I danced on top of the spongy sofa seats while they swayed to and fro, but I didn’t think of falling down, what is the point of thinking about

failure?

That will only impede progress and I’m not merely trying to fabricate an illusion to drape myself with a safety cloak. I wish I could have pranced and jumped on the wavering cushion tower,
but instead I begun to grow a look of seriousness and submerged myself into a pool of
focus
and
concentration.

Nonsensical imagery floated adrift from my mind and the energy pounced onto my fingertips and I started to write and draw, and draw and write. I popped a small remote from my pocket and made the stereo sing opera, followed by jazz, followed by something bluesy.

Those songs carried me into this calming state where nothing mattered except for the now kaleidoscopic landscapes and the spacemen with hypnotic eyes. I wasn’t jacked up on Columbian coffee beans, diet coca-cola caffeine, nor psychedelic highs and lows, I was just going with the current baby.

When the canoe is in in the river and you’re rowing with a chipped paddle and without a life-vest, don’t even try to make an adjustment when the water gets rocky and the water pushes you around like an elementary-school ***** bully.

You keep paddling and you don’t throw a rope onto a branch and feel the scene; go with the flow and travel down-stream,
because where you came from is long gone and there’s no point in wallowing and pleasuring yourself late at

night just

to feel better about your ****** life.

But, I don’t even want to think when I’m in an artsy mood, I just want peace, and if peace won’t come to my doorstep and will not call me back when I left five messages, then **** peace,
I’ll settle for a shot of cheap ***** and a scrunched-up cig.
I stop drawing and painting and writing
for a while and take a nice long gaze
at my chaotic collage and smile until the jester frowns.

In huge messy cursive were the words, “LOVE YOURSELF, DO NOT SHOW YOUR EMOTIONS AT A WHIM.”

I was now beginning to struggle to smile. This wasn’t easy to be so straight with yourself, I’m used to bending my back in the wrong way

                 and not accomplishing anything in the process.
Family is that  familiar word for the go-getters, the thoroughbreds of the families, those nearest and dearest applaud the strong to thrive, and yet a painful  forgotten word, for the lost generation,  ignored and despised,special and different, terminally unique, were only as strong as our weakest link lost black sheep and shepherds sanity on the brink of exposing the lies, waiting for the train that will never come to the station;
In time...

Forget
About
ME
I
LOVE
You

Screaming "Do I even exist? ******* LOVE ME!"As he tightens his headlock, begging to be loved, from a desperate rage of rejection.

"But why won't you love me the way that you don't? I'm a lovable hopeless drunk loser ,who hasn't washed in months, I'll be the prodigal son  if you want ,coming home and we can sit at the table for lunch ...wishful thinking! If only! you could love me unconditionally ,and not just on a hunch!
If  you want me, Just a touch of acknowledgement will do! I'll give you my soul on my sleeve, just some crumbs from your lofty plinth, to my slum will suffice!
I'm so ******* lost in the dark of the night, I forgot I was looking for love  and soulmates at first sight!"

Screaming to be acknowledged from the four corners of the globe since time began, everybody knows there's a pink elephant in the room being ignored, like the emperors new clothes.  Couples desperate to procreate, using frozen embryos. Those still remembered ,who died ages ago,
Forget me not , everyone wants to be known,Everyone misses someone, and children yearn to be grown. Don't forget all those lost childhoods, Once my heart was my home, a long long; long time ago!The machine advertises  the have's and the have not's ...all those special qualities, some of us just don't got.... were what's  lacking in our family units cost... and immediate vicinities. Thank God for the internet, hounding us  to forget our inherent need to be loved and belong, feeding us with toxic seeds of disconnected, anti-life and discombobulated lifelong wrongs, from  a plethora of sources transmitting The current Perfect archetypal family systems ,propagated  through the myriad of deadman tv shows, and films ,promoting an unblemished, should be family values and traditions, most of us know we will never live to experience. Force feeding us with a yearning of an unachievable contentment in our innocence , hoping in our wildest dreams ,we try to ignore the facts displayed in the constant narrative dictated through the mean instrument of mental emotional and spiritual propaganda...**** your tv licenceS! and smash the ******* thing into public artistic scenes!, smash them into smithereens!don't be ambivalent! No one wants to sit down on the fence as a family and watch on the screen the colour purple riddled with ****** and seriously toxic themes for participants.

Forgotten and ignored are the origins of the word family... famula-serving woman or famulante-servant or even familiarcus -house hold slave...So it should come as no surprise that the human race has been plagued and fractured with slavery throughout our brief brutal AGE.From a creative perspective I can understand the widespread epidemic curse in the hearts and minds of manhate and mankind,of the feeling that we do not belong to our very own families our communities and the societies structured to evoke the black sheep syndrome .It is this lack of feeling apart of, and that we do not exist , that has inspired an overwhelming need for us to persist and create our own families,tribes,gangs,communities, groups and fellowships. From the tower of babel, its as if  we have  been programmed to automatically divided, segregate and become as alien as possible to each other sides.Separating cultures with borders and religion,class and access all areas for members only. Blood is running through my body just like yours, and I done a big massive **** this morning! Do you identify? Nothing like a good ****!
This has become one of the defining factors of the human experience our evolutionary process and diversity.Not our **** similarities! Yet it is these differences that have caused over a billion to be killed! Thats a lot of hate and anger,pain and suffering ...And I'm adding up everyone whos ever been killed because of there differences...Just imagine?..Its probably a lot more! why can't we just get along? and stop all the wars? Everybody wants to be right, Everybody yearns to be wanted ,needed and loved,to feel they exist and that they belong.But with a record number of divorces,broken families and runaways in a culture spiraling further and further away from the original family structures intention, where do we go from here?What is our inheritance? Why do we always fight over money? Why not just care to dare to share?

I find in this day and age, we the broken human family, searching for all these possibilities of experiencing the human experience in the wrong social utilities . Such as gang warfare,militia, online gaming and the plethora of virtual communities available from facebook and myspace to mental health and suicide forums, social toxic rearing, which mimic a sense of divergence,preference, belonging and being apart of something other than feeling so alone! Which in reality we are!  Deepening our deepest wounds the one thing that we yearn for more than anything on the face of the earth is to feel connected,wanted ,needed and loved, everything a family is supposed to provide, not ruin and despise.

The most horrific emotions, I have ever felt was the rejection and abandonment by my mother, when I was just a special wild child, the terror and dread of not being wanted was horrific, and created a deeply destructive state which infected my core, and has grown into a great toxic spiritual tumor 30 years later. I fear I will never get over it! With my head in the sand, so many relevant individual grains just swept under the carpet like a hidden beach, and so I search for the love I was denied in a thousand ways and a million times I seek. From hunting for my mothers love in another woman or a man. I can't even begin to explain the pain my father inflicted upon me. lest I curl into a ball and die right now! Its as if he hated me more than words ,and yet I loved him so much. Left me seeking comfort in despair in the pit in the belly of the beast, through alcoholism and addiction of every kind! none of these methods was sufficient in filling the void inside,The hole in my soul can't breathe,for all to see, especially me ,can't hide but only these things expanded it , creating a deeper hunger and leaving me more broken and empty. My desperation to remain part of the family was displayed in my familiar slave like demeanour(desperate to please my mother) by cleaning the whole house  from top to bottom with a toothbrush. I would lose myself in the neverending chores, it was never a bore, as long as mother didn't let me go, but it was never enough, and it seems as if I was doomed to be a cast out! on my own, exposed to the harsh reality of being alone my worst nightmare coming true... me dying from loneliness! They say its true! and I can understand now how that could be possible ....

There are so many different types of families, and ways for us to feel as if we are connected to a greater community, to feel as if we fit in. But often children grow without a father figure to balance ,protect and nurture them ,lead them! But what if there father is a drunken ,violent,gambling ,deranged bully? what then? Surely they would be better off without such a toxic head of the family, infecting his sons and daughters with the sins of the father. Who of us is cursed with being the blacksheep of the family ? having to toil for the rest of our days in the vastness of our existence, primarily alone ,we search in vain for surrogate mothers and sisters and fathers and brothers. But we find them not, because substitution will never suffice in order for us to truly count and heal within and feel alive ! We must heal this broken bridge that has crippled us to the core in our very short miserable lives.

Its up to us to give love where we have been denied. Invite the broken souls inside, shelter them from the  bitter cold, Just to see another friendly face can mean so much! why is life so tough?, leave us like Lazarus risen from the grave,or Adam and Eve and able and cain to the prodigal son, we have always suffered when we were on our own and alone, I know you prefer your own company, but we were born to surpass ourselves and continue to co-exist beyond our own morality...Ub3
ORLA Oct 2012
I can't breathe properly.
There's something stuck inside me,
Where my heart should be.
I think it might be you.

I couldn't eat today,
And I went on three walks,
And danced the whole time.
I think I've got it bad.

You distract me like a love song
Playing in one earbud
Through every conversation,
All day long.

So pardon me if I start smiling
For no apparent reason,
And don't ask me what I'm thinking
Because I won't tell you.

The corners of my eyes
Seem to think everyone is you,
And your face is etched
Into the insides of my eyelids.

On that note, I'm sorry
For the constant ringing in your ears,
But I can't seem to stop
Thinking about you.
EmperorOfMine Jul 2019
Just a moment ago I was smiling from ear to ear
Casually wondering what I could do to make it better
Wanting to share it with everyone, and you
Just to see it wither like life always does
So beautiful
and then
not.


Unable to place the pieces into a clear picture
Incapable of understanding the message
You've sent me on a quest for a heart
that didn't exist...
And then blamed me for going.

When will you see that you were trusted
You were given real trust
Given a heart with real magic
A vessel with real actions
Just to deny it as real.


I'm discombobulated.
Angie Christine  Oct 2018
w a l l
Angie Christine Oct 2018
wall

writer’s block
creator’s block
artist’s block

what blocks the creative , artistic flow of a poet, a writer, a speaker of the truths of the heart and soul of humanity?

if you , my fellow artists, dreamers, poets, writers, soulful people, should discover the answer to the question we all ask , please do share; for I am weary , bewildered and discombobulated; and all the metaphorical, ephemeral, infinitesimal words trapped inside me are scratching and scrambling to come out .

with love and raw honesty from a fellow blocked writer
by Angie Christine on 12 October 2018 at 8:57pm

— The End —