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Mike Bergeron Sep 2012
There was a house fire on my street last night …well… not exactly my street, but on a little, sketchy, dead-end strip of asphalt, sidewalks, weeds, and garbage that juts into my block two houses down. It was on that street. Rosewood Court, population: 12, adjusted population: 11, characterized by anonymity and boarded windows, peppered with the swift movements of fat street rats. I’ve never been that close to a real, high-energy, make-sure-to-spray-down-your-roof-with-a-hose-so-it-doesn’t-catch­ fire before. It was the least of my expectations for the evening, though I didn’t expect a crate of Peruvian bananas to fall off a cargo plane either, punching through the ceiling, littering the parking lot with damaged fruit and shingles, tearing paintings and shelves and studs from the third floor walls, and crashing into our kitchen, shattering dishes and cabinets and appliances. Since that never happened, and since neither the former nor the latter situation even crossed my mind, I’ll stick with “least of my expectations,” and bundle up with it inside that inadequate phrase whatever else may have happened that I wouldn’t have expected.



I had been reading in my living room, absently petting the long calico fur of my roommate’s cat Dory. She’s in heat, and does her best to make sure everyone knows it, parading around, *** in the air, an opera of low trilling and loud meows and deep purring. As a consequence of a steady tide of feline hormones, she’s been excessively good humored, showering me with affection, instead of her usual indifference, punctuated by occasional, self-serving shin rubs when she’s hungry. I saw the lights before I heard the trucks or the shouts of firemen or the panicked wail of sirens, spitting their warning into the night in A or A minor, but probably neither, I’m no musician. Besides, Congratulations was playing loud, flowing through the speakers in the corners of the room, connected to the record player via the receiver with the broken volume control, travelling as excited electrons down stretches of wire that are, realistically, too short, and always pull out. The song was filling the space between the speakers and the space between my ears with musings on Brian Eno, so the auditory signal that should have informed me of the trouble that was afoot was blocked out. I saw the lights, the alternating reds and whites that filled my living room, drawing shifting patterns on my walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and shelves of books, dragging me towards the door leading outside, through the cluttered bike room, past the sleeping, black lump of oblivious fur that is usually my boisterous male kitten, and out into the bedlam I  had previously been ignorant to. I could see the smoke, it was white then gray then white, all the while lending an acrid taste to the air, but I couldn’t see where it was issuing from. The wind was blowing the smoke toward my apartment, away from Empire Mills. I tried to count the firetrucks, but there were so many. I counted six on Wilmarth Ave, one of which was the awkward-looking, heavy-duty special hazards truck. In my part of the city, the post-industrial third-wave ***** river valley, you never know if the grease fire that started with homefries in a frying pan in an old woman’s kitchen will escalate into a full-blown mill fire, the century-old wood floors so saturated with oil and kerosene and ****** and manufacturing chemicals and ghosts and god knows what other flammable **** that it lights up like a fifth of July leftover sparkler, burning and melting the hand of the community that fed it for so many decades, leaving scars that are displayed on the local news for a week and are forgotten in a few years’ time.



The night was windy, and the day had been dry, so precautions were abundant, and I counted two more trucks on Fones Ave. One had the biggest ladder I’ve ever seen. It was parked on the corner of Fones and Wilmarth, directly across from the entrance into the forgotten dead-end where the forgotten house was burning, and the ladder was lifting into the air. By now my two roommates had come outside too, to stand on our rickety, wooden staircase, and Jeff said he could see flames in the windows of one of the three abandoned houses on Rosewood, through the third floor holes where windows once were, where boards of plywood were deemed unnecessary.



“Ay! Daddy!”



My neighbor John called up to us. He serves as the eyes and ears and certainly the mouth of our block, always in everyone’s business, without being too intrusive, always aware of what’s going down and who’s involved. He proceeded to tell us the lowdown on the blaze as far as he knew it, that there were two more firetrucks and an ambulance down Rosewood, that the front and back doors to the house were blocked by something from inside, that those somethings were very heavy, that someone was screaming inside, that the fire was growing.



Val had gone inside to get his jacket, because despite the floodlights from the trucks imitating sunlight, the wind and the low temperature and the thought of a person burning alive made the night chilly. Val thought we should go around the block, to see if we could get a better view, to satisfy our congenital need to witness disaster, to see the passenger car flip over the Jersey barrier, to watch the videos of Jihadist beheadings, to stand in line to look at painted corpses in velvet, underlit parlors, and sit in silence while their family members cry. We walked down the stairs, into full floodlight, and there were first responders and police and fully equipped firefighters moving in all directions. We watched two firemen attempting to open an old, rusty fire hydrant, and it could’ve been inexperience, the stress of the situation, the condition of the hydrant, or just poor luck, but rather than opening as it was supposed to the hydrant burst open, sending the cap flying into the side of a firetruck, the water crashing into the younger of the two men’s face and torso, knocking him back on his ***. While he coughed out surprised air and water and a flood of expletives, his partner got the situation under control and got the hose attached. We turned and walked away from the fire, and as we approached the turn we’d take to cut through the rundown parking lot that would bring us to the other side of the block, two firemen hurried past, one leading the other, carrying between them a stretcher full of machines for monitoring and a shitload of wires and tubing. It was the stiff board-like kind, with handles on each end, the kind of stretcher you might expect to see circus clowns carry out, when it’s time to save their fallen, pie-faced cohort. I wondered why they were using this archaic form of patient transportation, and not one of the padded, electrical ones on wheels. We pushed past the crowd that had begun forming, walked past the Laundromat, the 7Eleven, the carwash, and took a left onto the street on the other side of the parking lot, parallel to Wilmarth. There were several older men standing on the sidewalk, facing the fire, hands either in pockets or bringing a cigarette to and from a frowning mouth. They were standing in the ideal place to witness the action, with an unobstructed view of the top two floors of the burning house, its upper windows glowing orange with internal light and vomiting putrid smoke.  We could taste the burning wires, the rugs, the insulation, the asbestos, the black mold, the trash, and the smell was so strong I had to cover my mouth with my shirt, though it provided little relief. We said hello, they grunted the same, and we all stood, watching, thinking about what we were seeing, not wanting to see what we were thinking.

Two firefighters were on the roof by this point, they were yelling to each other and to the others on the ground, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the sirens from all the emergency vehicles that were arriving.  It seemed to me they sent every firetruck in the city, as well as more than a dozen police cars and a slew of ambulances, all of them arriving from every direction. I guess they expected the fire to get really out of hand, but we could already see the orange glow withdrawing into the dark of the house, steam and smoke rippling out of the stretched, wooden mouths of the rotted window frames. In a gruff, habitual smoker’s voice, we heard

                                      “Chopper called the fire depahtment

We was over at the vet’s home

                He says he saw flames in the windas

                                                                                                                                                We all thought he was shittin’ us

We couldn’t see nothin’.”

A man between fifty-five to sixty-five years old was speaking, no hair on his shiny, tanned head, old tattoos etched in bluish gray on his hands, arms, and neck, menthol smoke rising from between timeworn fingers. He brought the cigarette to his lips, drew a hearty chest full of smoke, and as he let it out he repeated

                                                “Yea, chopper called em’

Says he saw flames.”

The men on the roof were just silhouettes, backlit by the dazzling brightness of the lights on the other side.  The figure to the left of the roof pulled something large up into view, and we knew instantly by the cord pull and the sound that it was a chainsaw. He began cutting directly into the roof. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, wondered if he was scared of falling into the fire, assumed he probably was, but had at least done this before, tried to figure out if he was doing it to gain entry or release pressure or whatever. The man to the right was hacking away at the roof with an axe. It was surreal to watch, to see two men transformed from public servants into fingers of destruction, the pinkie and ring finger fighting the powerful thumb of the controlled chemical reaction eating the air below them, to watch the dark figures shrouded in ethereal light and smoke and sawdust and what must’ve been unbearable heat from below, to be viewing everything with my own home, my belongings, still visible, to know it could easily have gone up in flames as well.

I should’ve brought my jacket. I remember complaining about it, about how the wind was passing through my skin like a window screen, chilling my blood, in sharp contrast to the heat that was morphing and rippling the air above the house as it disappeared as smoke and gas up into the atmosphere from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe one, the men on the roof were still working diligently cutting and chopping, but we could no longer see any signs of flames, and there were figures moving around in the house, visible in the windows of the upper floors, despite the smoke. Figuring the action must be reaching its end, we decided to walk back to our apartment. We saw Ken’s brown pickup truck parked next to the Laundromat, unable to reach our parking lot due to all the emergency vehicles and people clogging our street. We came around the corner and saw the other two members of the Infamous Summers standing next to our building with the rest of the crowd that had gathered. Dosin told us the fire was out, and that they had pulled someone from inside the gutted house, but no ambulance had left yet, and his normally smiling face was flat and somber, and the beaten guitar case slung over his shoulder, and his messed up hair, and the red in his cheeks from the cold air, and the way he was moving rocks around with the toe of his shoe made him look like a lost child, chasing a dream far from home but finding a nightmare in its place, instead of the professional who never loses his cool or his direction.

The crowd all began talking at once, so I turned around, towards the dead end and the group of firefighters and EMTs that were emerging. Their faces were stoic, not a single expression on all but one of those faces, a young EMT, probably a Basic, or a Cardiac, or neither, but no older than twenty, who was silently weeping, the tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks, his eyes empty of emotion, his lips drawn tight and still. Four of them were each holding a corner of the maroon stretcher that took two to carry when I first saw it, full of equipment. They did not rush, they did not appear to be tending to a person barely holding onto life, they were just carrying the weight. As they got close gasps and cries of horror or disgust or both issued from the crowd, some turned away, some expressions didn’t change, some eyes closed and others stayed fixed on what they came to see. One woman vomited, right there on the sidewalk, splashing the shoes of those near her with the partially digested remains of her EBT dinner. I felt my own stomach start to turn, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t.

                                                                                It was like I was seven again,

                                in the alleyway running along the side of the junior high school I lived near and would eventually attend,

looking in silent horror at what three eighth graders from my neighborhood were doing.

It was about eight in the evening of a rainy,

late summer day,

and I was walking home with my older brother,

cutting through the alley like we always did.

The three older boys were standing over a small dog,

a terrier of some sort.

They had duct taped its mouth shut and its legs together,

but we could still hear its terrified whines through its clenched teeth.

One of the boys had cut off the dog’s tail.

He had it in one hand,

and was still holding the pocket knife in the other.

None of them were smiling,

or talking,

nor did they take notice of Andrew and I.

There was a garden bag standing up next to them that looked pretty full,

and there was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to it.

In slow motion I watched,

horrified,

as one of the boys,

Brian Jones-Hartlett,

picked up the shaking animal,

put it in the bag,

covered it with the leaves from the ground,

and with wide,

shining eyes,

set the bag

on fire

with a long-necked

candle

lighter.

It was too much for me then. I couldn’t control my nausea. I threw up and sat down while my head swam.

I couldn’t understand. I forgot my brother and the fact that he was older, that he should stop this,

Stop them,

There’s a dog in there,

You’re older, I’m sick,

Why can’t I stop them?

It was like
Terry O'Leary Nov 2013
Ah Consuela! Invoking vast vistas for visions of green Spanish eyes,
I discern them again where she left me back then,
                 as we kissed when she parted, my friend.
Through those ruins I tread towards the footlights, now dead,
                 where I’ll muse as her shadows ascend.

                  .
                          .
Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she teases the mirror with green Spanish eyes;
her serape entangles her brooches and bangles
                 like lace on the sorcerer’s looms,
and her cape of the night, she drapes tight to excite,
                 and her fan is embellished with plumes.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching as spectators savour her green Spanish eyes;
taming wild concertinas, the dark ballerina
                 performs on the music hall stage,
but she shies from the sound of ovation unbound
                 like a timorous bird in a cage.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she quickens the pit with her green Spanish eyes;
as the cymbals shake, clashing, the floodlights wake, flashing,
                 igniting the wild fireflies,
and the piccolo piper’s inviting the vipers
                 to coil neath the cold caldron skies.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the shimmering shadows in green Spanish eyes
as I rise from my chair and proceed to the stair
                 with a hesitant sip of my wine.
Though she doesn’t deny me, she wanders right by me
                 with neither a look nor a sign.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she looks to the stage with her green Spanish eyes,
(for her senses scoff, scorning the biblical warning
                 of kisses of Judas that sting,
with her pierced ears defeating the echoes repeating)
                 and smiles at the magpie that sings.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching faint embers a’ stir in her green Spanish eyes,
for a soft spoken stranger enveloping danger
                 has captured the rhyme in the room
as he slips into sight through a crack in the night
                 midst the breath of her heavy perfume.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she gauges his guise through her green Spanish eyes
– from his gypsy-like mane, to his diamond stud cane,
                 to the raven engraved on his vest –
for a faraway form, a tempestuous storm,
                 lurks and heaves neath the cleav’e of her *******.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the caravels cruising her green Spanish eyes;
with the castanets clacking like ancient masts cracking
                 he whips ’round his cloak with a ****
and without sacrificing, at mien so enticing,
                 she floats with her face facing his.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the vertigo veiling her green Spanish eyes,
while the drumbeat pounds, droning, the rhythm sounds, moaning,
                 of jungles Jamaican entwined
in the valleys concealing the vineyards revealing
                 the vaults in the caves of her mind.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching life’s carnivals call to her green Spanish eyes,
and with paused palpitations the tom-tom temptations
                 come taunting her tremulous feet
with her toe tips a’ tingle while jute boxes jingle
                 for jesters that jive on the street.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she rides ocean tides in her green Spanish eyes,
and her silhouette’s travelling on ripples unravelling
                 and shaking the shipwracking shores,
as she strides from the light to the black cauldron night
                 through the candlelit cabaret doors.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she dances till dawn flashing green Spanish eyes,
with her movements adorning a trickle of morning
                 as sipped by the mouth of the moon,
while her tresses twirl, shaming the filaments flaming
                 that flow from the sun’s oval spoon.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she masks for a moment her green Spanish eyes.
Then the magpie that sings ceases preening her wings
                 and descends as a lean bird of prey –
as she flutters her ’lashes and laughs in broad splashes,
                 his narrowing eyes start to stray.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching fey carousels spin in her green Spanish eyes,
and the porcelain ponies and leprechaun cronies
                 race, reaching for gold and such things,
even being reminded that only the blinded
                 are fooled by the brass in the rings.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she shepherds the shadows with green Spanish eyes,
but as evening sinks, ebbing, the skyline climbs, webbing,
                 and weaves through the temples of stone,
while the nightingales sing of a kiss on the wing
                 in the depths of the dunes all alone.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the music and magic in green Spanish eyes,
as she dances enchanted, while firmly implanted
                 in tugs of his turbulent arms,
till he cuts through the strings, tames the magpie that sings,
                 and seduces once more with his charms.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, the citadel steams in her green Spanish eyes,
but behind the dark curtain the savants seem certain
                 that nothing and no one exists,
and though vapours look vacant, the vagabond vagrants
                 remain within mythical mists.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching as lightning at midnight in green Spanish eyes
kindles cracks within crystals like flashes from pistols
                 residing inside of the gloom
as it hovers above us betraying a dove as
                 she flees from the fountain of doom.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, distilling despair in her green Spanish eyes,
and the bitterness stings like the snap of the strings
                 when a mystical  mandolin sighs
as the vampire shades **** the life from charades
                 neath the resinous residue skies.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she looks to the ledge with her green Spanish eyes,
for the terrace hangs high and she’s thinking to fly
                 and abandon fate’s merry-go-round.
At the edge I perceive her and rush to retrieve her –
                 she stumbles, falls far to the ground.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching the sparkles a’ spilling from green Spanish eyes.
As I peer from the railing, with evening exhaling,
                 I cry out a lover’s lament –
there she lies midst the crowd with her spirit unbowed,
                 but her body’s all broken and bent.

Ah Consuela! I’m watching, she beckons me hither with green Spanish eyes,
and I’m slightly amazed being snared in her gaze
                 and a’ swirl in a hurricane way,
but the seconds are slipping, my courage is dripping,
                 the moment is bleeding away.

Ah Consuela! I touch her - she weeps tender tears from her green Spanish eyes;
as the breezes cease blowing, her essence leaves, flowing,
                 in streams neath the ambient light,
and the droplets drip swarming, so silent, yet warming,
                 like rain in a midsummer night.

Ah Consuela! I hold her, am hushed by the hints in her green Spanish eyes,
while her whispers are breathing the breaths of the seething
                 electrical skeletal winds,
and the words paint the poems that rivers a’ slowin’
                 reveal where the waterfall ends.

Ah Consuela! I’m fading in fires a’ flicker in green Spanish eyes,
as she plays back the past, she abandons and casts
                 away matters that no longer mend.
           .
                  .
And she reached out instead, as she lifted her head,
                 and we kissed as she parted, my friend.
           .
                  .
                          .
Ah Consuela! I’m tangled, entombed, trapped in tales of your green Spanish eyes,
in forsaken cantinas beyond the arenas
                 where night-time illusions once flowed,
for the ash neath my shoulder still throbs as it smoulders
                 some place near the end of the road.
Wordsinalign Apr 2017
Translucent stars get cloaked by the glittering elevation,
They douse the yellow burning on boulders that lack sensation.
A tin-plated bowl plays pretend as porcelain cup,
pressured by the maintainance of going up, up and up.

His loneliness came in waves,
every time he visited his brother’s grave.
This is biggest of reason why he took off,
to live across the desert far from the trough.
He pressed down every emotion and kept it pressed against the last, new ones began to take form with secrets of his past.
He had earned a dance with the devil, cursed by his days of revel.
He uncovered a million reasons why he shouldn’t stay,
For reasons he never figured, what was he supposed to do to not run away.

And so he left where silence felt like a familiar existence,
his doorway locked out from world’s insistence.
He lived far away in resistance from the city of daze,
a place where the yellow sunlight gleams, created a haze.
Surrounded by rows of empty parking lots lit by floodlights of reason, through his window he witnessed the metamorphosis of season;
In gardens of sober logic, he lived exotic.

His heavy casing of heart began to soften,
with every passing day he saw often.
He admired her from afar her glow was irresistible,
he drew close to her love like it was inescapable.
All this while he carried his burden with thorns of grief,
his heart had healed when he sighed a relief.
After days months and years, he lifted his hands to the heavens,
and prayed for all his sins that were left unforgiven.
The world spin around again and was not flat,
Look what happens with love like that?
Samuel  Jul 2011
floodlights
Samuel Jul 2011
Bathe us in glowing webs
Strung from the moon
Their floodlights blind those who stare
Straight into them

So we look just slightly left.
III Jan 2015
Maybe,
It’s not about finding
The light at the end of the tunnel,
Maybe,
The tunnel doesn’t even
End, and the light isn’t
The warm glow of a
Sun so high above,
But the dim illumination
From a floodlight, dusty,
And draped with cobwebs,
And maybe,
The floodlight isn’t there,
It’s shattered and its pieces
Bury into the skin of your
Bare feet as you step on them,
And continue to trek forward in
Darkness, towards the next light.
Maybe,
That’s a good thing.
You’re in a tunnel after all,
You can’t drown in blackness as
Easily as you can the sea.
Maybe,
The extra darkness
Makes the next floodlight
Brighter, and you’ll
Stop, and bathe in it a
While as your aching lings
Finally rest.
Maybe,
If you’re brave,
You’ll think you can
Live under the light,
Unaware that you’ll
Lose your knowledge
Of the darkness,
And when your light
Finally coughs,
And shudders
And dies,
You’ll get lost in the dark again,
Turned around,
Heading away from the new lights ahead.
Or maybe,
You prefer the shadows,
Carry a bat,
Or a golf club,
Or whatever blunt weapon
Catches your fancy,
And you smash each light
You pass,
Cutting the feet of all those
Behind.

Maybe,
There isn't a light at the end of the tunnel,
Just an endless string of floodlights,
Bright,
Shattered,
And lost.
Edward Coles Oct 2015
Rugby, Warwickshire
16/10/2015

Unholy streets of G-d, liquid tobacco,
gentle froth and steam
from the coffee estuary, split beneath the clock tower
on the idle hour; more pigeons than people,
more buildigs than choices
on this small-town, charity shop parade.

The women are still beautiful, still unattainable,
still on the brink of a breakdown
in the most confident dress.
Street-pastors carry the drunks home,
the street-cleaners appear by the afterparty,
clear out the old bottles
before the commuter picks up cigarettes
from the newsagents that never rests.

Tattoo parlours, barber shops,
Christmas on the radio come Hallowe'en-
this is the town that crazy built:
war-time poetry, jet propulsion,
chief inventor of sport,
of mild alcohol addiciton.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
hundreds of places to hide away;
a foreign face in a sea of family and friends.
Landlocked, gridlocked,
centrally located but left out on a limb;
this town clings to the tracks,
it's avenues of escape
the only margin to keep the residents
out of mind and in their place.

But this is where I grew up,
always more car-park than parkland,
my first steps on Campbell Street,
on Armstrong Close,
first time I broke the law on Bridget Street,
on Selborne Road.
I'd push my bike all around this town,
no stopping off for a smoke,
for to get my fix-
I'd push on and on past graveyards and open bars
without a second gance.

Now, it's all shooters and soul-singers
and happenstance;
chicken wings on a late-night binge,
a box of wine, a night of sin,
wake up in shame,
life's a guessing game
and guess what, you'll never win.

Chewing gum, patches,
vapour that scratches the back of my throat,
nicotine in my blood,
you know, I'm trying my best to get clean.
Blister packs of vitamins, bowls of fruit,
buying coconut water over the counter-
green tea by the rising moon,
incense sticks and vegetables in the garden,
yet by the time night rolls on by
the locus of my eyes, they darken;
I'll be back on the beer,
I'll be smoking a carton.

This is the town that crazy built,
even the flowers by the roadside wilt,
cement factory, hum-drum poverty,
post-code belonging to Coventry,
kept out of the war
by a matter of minutes,
kept from the future
by corporate interest.

Hospital lights, supermarket glow,
I can't remember the last time
I wasn't loaded with chemicals
every time I get home,
every time I sign out
and put my head on the pillow,
I see familiar streets, familiar signs,
the job centre, the floodlights,
the 12% lager, the twist of lime.
I struggle with rhyme,
I struggle most days to get out of the house,
but at night, I know, that sea of doubt
is a river of light, to ruin my liver,
to spike my fever, to calm me down.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
and this world it don't spin,
it just throws me around.
A beat poem (adapted slightly for reading purposes) about being young in my home-town. You can hear a spoken word version here: https://soundcloud.com/edwardcoles/poetry-and-music
Lora Lee Jan 2017
and today
on this day of
your birth
I am ******
down into
the rhythms
of all that
we have been
until this moment
the biting rawness
             of new ebbs
the saddened veins
that vibrate
like used, worn
           guitar strings
the curve of
your fingers
that once played
            upon my skin
your weighted down aura
that I can no longer penetrate
and buoy up
and here I stand
all glowing light spirals
my head whirring
in mystic opulence
my gaze pulled to
the reverence of stars
my purity of river
in a swoosh
around my waist
that gurgling clarity
of liquid
pooling me in sacred
                            cleansing
that I must now take into
another rush
of estuary
and as I raise my arms
to the heavens
I almost fade
into the floodlights
                            of time
and my tears
push through
my skin
like the clear
jewels
of
salvation
Time to howl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQjMmfS0p_k
Andrew Rueter  Jan 2018
Flood
Andrew Rueter Jan 2018
For forty days and forty nights
We had no reasons to fight
So the planet was flooded
By the warm blooded

******* soaked
Visible ******
No more cloaks
No more loners
For everyone there was a match
But here's the insidious catch
It didn't take long for people to get bored
And start cutting and crossing cords
Until we resembled a chaotic horde

For forty days and forty nights
The Earth was flooding
Until things got muddy
And clouded transcendence
In the form of independence

Our lives keep knotting together
Our lives are rotting endeavors
We were completely happy
But felt that was too sappy
We sought edgy darkness
In a world that was shark-less
We made the world we live in
By putting on shark fins
And eating those that fall overboard
Out of their relationship
We try to be their overlord
Or add them to our list
Love grants a clenched fist
When there is value to a kiss

For forty days and forty nights
We turned on Earth's floodlights
And the world was flooded by love
Until we decided to try to look above
To see nothing there
Just the empty air

There was a time when there was love
Now there is none
Only a gun
And the number one
Can be found in my self published poetry book “Icy”.
https://www.amazon.com/Icy-Andrew-Rueter-ebook/dp/B07VDLZT9Y/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Icy+Andrew+Rueter&qid=1572980151&sr=8-1
Orion Schwalm Jan 2012
Floodlights.
They’re ghosts right?
From our memories,
Have been seized, we
From the perfect dream?
Drip drop drip drop
Turning tricks, dropped the jack
*****, when you coming back?
It’s off it’s off
Seldom silence serves as sight’s severance.
**** chop **** chop    OW!
******* pistol clock
Whip glock whipping ****
How many names can you think of for a knockoff
Of soda pop?
I’m sorry sir you’ve got the wrong Ryan,
I haven’t starred in any movies that cryin’
Old seniles, and sensitive females, so honestly claim
Was the way life should have been for them.

Oh in that case I’ll show you the brain,
Then kick you in the *** for being so gay.
Hold on there, wrong Ryan.
I ain’t waiting tables, or banefully fryin’
Up **** that I spit in for women with tips worth less
Than my two cents.

Oh I apologize, celebrity lookalike.
Must be the weather or the windshield is cracked
Or the antennae are bent or the cables are jacked
But I can’t seem to figure out just who you are
When I’m watching the TV pimped into my car,
Let’s try a few shall we
Not a cook…Not a lover boi…Silence of the…Birds, if you’re a bird I’m a…Bat…Batman! Batman and Robin! Red Robin! No not a waiter…
Red hearse, Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Ryan Milton
Wrong Ryan, Wrong Ryan!

Oh my god, silly me
I seem to have gone on a tangent you see.
Tandem bicycles, all of them for free.
If you would only come visit. Agreed?
Of course I know that you’re THE Ryan B.
Dedicated to Ryan Bowdish.
neth jones Dec 2023
blood                                                  
blood patter and splash                            
leads us         concrete toward
tracing back        til the scene        
i’ve flashing thoughts of the brutality
   the violence     that must of cussed  
  between persons            
         in fear    fray    and inebriation

down the steps                                     
            my four year old child and I go          
the greasing bleed     in bronze putters  
growing and leadening
on stone labours

glowing citrus    the refrigeration
                          of the underpass
          ‘flips the bird'   at the summer blaze
grey dead coral bricks of urination  
seasoned in deep   beading now cold
the broke up weapon                        
                   candy slates of brittle teeth
glass / bottle / beer /brown
    the neck its' hilt              
     and the main mud of the bleeding

the flies are the thing                                
                         th­at bothers my ‘little nipper’
usually a flapper of queries on repetition
no other queries are raised
     just eager for the vibration
      of train carriages gatling over our heads

i stopper any words i may have on the matter
  he holds my hand with his hot hand
we progress under a port arms                                   
                            procession of caged floodlights
      and walled in by fresh graffiti
fingers dripping   retching for the guttering
Observed 23/06/23

unused -

on thickened walls      painted on over and over
by the neighbourhood watch
a  narrowed burrow
Denel Kessler Nov 2016
midnight, floodlights
purse seiners packed in tight
anchored on the fragile shoal
shadows play on the white wall
dune grass, needle, leaf of tree
gallows rising from the sea
back and forth the tenders run
salmon gathered one by one
                                      
                                 the struggle and the toil
                                                                      
                                                         the silver flashing fins
                                                                                          
                                                                            leaping from the net

                                                                                            slipping back within
Jim Kleinhenz Aug 2010
Walter, I just want to sit on my *** and **** and think about Dante.*
—Samuel Beckett

All this fractures the Wolf. The ancient leaves
amid the ancient woods, wind riffling wind
in eddies she can see but she can’t hear,
the braying of a fatted calf which she
could eat, if she could hear thy call, O Wolf.

The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin and viola—play the
pizzicato of rain commencing…

The Wolf sits to watch—what?—the floodlights fill
the stadium? the baton poised? the crowd
about to have their daily dose of not
quite silence served up yet again? She hates
that they have come to watch a prophecy.

It’s raining full blast now, the Wolf’s exchange
for music, how things balance out, how rain
fornicates in the forest, with its pools
and puddles, how it tenders lakes and rivers
and shadows… It can’t be! Ahead she sees him.

She sees Dante, the poet of the prophecy,
the one she has to drown.  It’s why she’s deaf.
She will not hear him wail. **** him so he will rot
in hell before the other poet comes. **** him
and spare the world another poem about

another world. The rain and music grow
so dense around her soul. She is so quick,
too quick for him to flee. She drags him still
alive, drags him to the lake of his heart.
Sink and die. In Paradise only bubbles rise.

The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin, viola—play it soft,
so soft, as if the rain is about to start…

The Wolf and I walk the slopes of hell.
When Farinata and Cavalcante
rise up to ask her, ‘Who were thy ancestors?’
and ‘Where Is *****?’ she howls. O Wolf.
O Tuscan. She howls.
© Jim Kleinhenz
almat011  Aug 2019
BBW and SSBBW
almat011 Aug 2019
A *** girl is completely beautiful, she is endowed with the full-fledged beauty of mind and body, her forms are full of beauty and a tidbit, in my eyes you will always be perfect. So hot and sweet, well, just tin, I have a severe burn from excitement of ***** and love. You are attractive from any side in any form. Your body seems to order me to love you again and again. Your yummy appearance to enter deep *** hypnosis of love is so beautiful well just to the loss of pulse, delicate as pink rose skin, pink tint on your skin like delicate pink opal, you are the personification of the true form of femininity, in my mind I see only you since I'm in love with your soul and body, my soul, heart and mind are saturated with the powerful force of love for you, true love for you and excitement boils in me and boils, you stand out with its outstanding beauty from the crowd of girls and women, as if several thousand illuminate you ajor floodlights accompanied with your favorite music. I gently kiss your skin and it’s just the divine taste of love and passion, I look at you and don’t notice how long I look at you, your great beauty is always fashionable in my heart, for me you are the highest top model of true beauty, I comprehend your bowels of amazing beauty, you expose your soul during unforgettable ***, so it is your image is like unforgettable ***, you expose your sensual tender soul filled with burning passion like a fashionable jacket, you ****** me with its beauty with style and special chic. My whole mind is filled with you, every neuron is filled with you, now my brain is so arranged, when you undress with deep delight it becomes difficult to breathe right up to the shock of admiration, to what extent it is a wonderful sight that I just sweat and stutter with excitement. Than more often I see you, the happier I become like a child, as if every time I fall in love, looking at you for the first time every day, I see that you are the highest happiness and love in the universe. I am in love with your ideal divine forms of the body, they are just perfect and perfect. I feel you and love and excitement by the whole nervous system I feel only you alone and it goes into the soul into the subconscious, into dreams, and the whole nervous system receives a powerful ****** of romance from love for you, like a great volcano or a great tsunami, it carries me into the world dreams where everywhere you are just like a storm and swirling like a huge tornado, the element of my love is able to crush this world. You are my most cherished desire that I made every day. When you look at me, the violin symphony gently sounds, when you peer at me the piano keys, from deep sensual eye contact, in your eyes I see infinite beauty.
Author: Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

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