Dangling sweet ambrosia scents
Repose upon the jasmine bench
Easing sorrowful soughs
Amidst lamented long slipped
Melancholy memories singing
Suserant soliloquies in stillness


--bruised orange

I got 99 problems but hip-hop ain't one.

"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block"
Nas and Jigga beef was the first I heard of drama in the music industry-
fueled me as a youngin' crowned from my brother's love of it.
Fast forward to when the radio put me on-
in the garage, on my mongoose
I heard someone spitting through the stereo
didn't pay much mind until a high-pitched voice rang through.
"Through the wire-"
no "through the fire?"
I couldn't understand but this dude started rhyming
and speaking through the speakers at me
my hair raised up and I knew this was love-
smile on my face at first listen
never really heard anything like it.
I thought back to the first song like that I heard-
"Life's a ***** and then you die-"
knew that line all too well
resonation in my bones didn't feel so much like a stranger-
my young self started spitting around the older crowd
they looked down and smiled-
a sense of admiration.
Hip-hop was my way in my ticket to acknowledgment.
Started listening to Eminem before I was even 10.
5th grade on the bus rides to and from field trips
"Shut the **** up guys I'm trying to listen"
headphones in, finally found someone to relate
so many thoughts of suicide being taken away-
realized the radio wasn't really my thing
too much pop and not enough soul
the words they sang were nothing to me.
In the beginning hip-hop was just a facade I liked to play
so other people would notice and think I'm pretty cool
but somewhere along the line it took me over
bumping nas, em and pac through my stereo
mom looking in my room like
"where the **** did my daughter go?
she's listening to this ****, she's gotta get a grip-"
But when I hurt the music would listen
bass lines and samples running through my veins
didn't know much about hip-hop
except the way it made me feel..
Technology came abrupt and the computer was my safe haven
the runaway from the abuse I was experiencing
mommy and daddy fighting?
headphones in so I can't hear it.
crying through each verse
and then the chorus hits and I'm better
finally realized I wasn't alone in this hell hole.
Started up a myspace-
more room for discovery
Eazy-e some Biggie more Nas
and **** even some Jeezy.
Every word they spoke
became something that was apart of me.
"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block."
Nas said it best-
old school rappers speaking to me before bed.
Then I discovered Cudi, more Kanye, andre 3k.  
thought about how I had to write like this
it was my destiny to manifest this passion
put it into my pen until I could learn to lavish
in the luxuries they could afford
not the riches but the rhyme schemes
and the way it helped me
again and again would listen until I got tired
notebooks full of rhymes
my life was on the line and it became wired
then came limewire and my mind blew up
there's an entire world of music I never knew-
download after download the music became me
so much more to go through
****** up my computer
virus to the hard drive
all my music's gone. ****.
Freaking out in my room at midnight
threw a chair, punched the wall
mom asking if i'm alright.
"*******, go away"
She thought the music was to blame
but without that **** is why it happened
never gave up on this **** called rappin'
wrote my first rhyme when I was in 5th grade
poetry turned to rhyme schemes
and samples I liked to play.
Passion turned to aggression
when everyone started spitting
thought this was me and no one elses
has to prove who I was to the masses.
High School came and I was
"The girl who rapped"
freestyle lunch sessions to secure it.
Voices from the crowd
"**** she murdered it".
Slipped up-
started on the pills
too many thoughts in my mind
too many demons to ****-
ran away from the hip-hop
turned that **** to heavy metal
pop-punk and punk rock.
Turned away my from my passion
and started writing poetry
stanzas, sibilance and sonnets
filled my insides.
I suffered without the classics
the dream began to fade away.
We moved-
became a recluse.
didn't eat for weeks
but this time money wasn't the issue.
Heard something bumpin' from the basement
my hair stood up when I heard that base hit
ran down like I was chasin' after my passion again
"what is this?"
my cousin laughed "Life Changes"
"who is it?"
"Wu-tang" he said to me
I bobbed my head and smiled once again
"Wu is indeed for the children"
he laughed and so did I.
Realized my love for hip-hop
would never actually die.
"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block"

The shires bask serenely in the summer sun.
Streams flow smoothly down the green hillsides.
All is well with the world
As apple blossoms bloom.

Such peaceful scenes are soothing to the soul.
Spiritually uplifting: a sensual seduction
Of sight, sound and aromatic smells.

Snakes may hiss and stoats may snarl,
But nothing reduces this sense of peace and calm.
Assonance and sibilance flows as I scribe
My idle dreams upon this page.

It’s good to let your imagination loose
To planets out there amongst the stars
Or simply let it roam over the slumbering countryside.
Good to escape the struggles and strife
Of daily life.
Good to sleep easy
After meditating at our leisure
Refreshing ourselves with Mother Nature’s
Soothing Love.

Paul Butters

© PB 8\1\2022.

Love is a thousand women who fail to amount to one,
Peasant seductress with bared shoulders of red dun-colored roads and candle smoke,
Who pours down her wet, ungoverned hair, like a fast-fading storm to dry over Aurelian walls,
In that dark sneer of sultriness over the sentry-like stillness of ramparts and stone,
A wasp in water whose sibilance comes from what the sting makes,
Like the upgathered phalanx of spears in the sand,
Or the sisters of fate who have coiled their hair as sunset snakes,
Her fingertips ***** into me like much-traveled and ancient rain.

How wonderful it is, I say, to the retreating
yellow form of your feelings I mistook
For Infatuation, you’re a romance heckler
far and far away from
Accepting fruition within classrooms and
being labelled as an angel.
And it was within forbidden hell of
euphoria, I found
You nestled in the society’s psyche
neither content or calling
For help. Neither did you neglect the
pink spectacles of the society,
Even found yourself moulding and moulding
into a fungi green
That I could not recognize, within that
half-sanctum, half-oasis I found you
absentmindedly
Bathing in, you were already out of
its waters.
And I was no longer seeing you within
the dry desert or the sibilance
of my desires, but instead
in cement woodlands and
Within artificial communication and
Intimacy I gave willingly.
Now how does it feel, to have your
heart in one piece,
How does it feel to not use
whipped cream to fill in the
Cracked, salty sections of your
own ***** that,
Out of confusion, continues to
play its favorite song but
in all the wrong beats.
Somehow within cacophony I found
you, nestled, comfortable in
Bogus, fraudulent wings of a former
angel- who now weeps under our
Feet in theory- Somehow, somewhere,
I lost you within an epiphany
That reeked of bliss and pleasure-
Somehow, we end up losing
Twins of the heavens when all is well.
How wonderful.
How wonderful it is, I say, to your
lost, secretly-weeping figure
That I can’t tell whether transparent or
yellow your figure is.
But I keep speaking-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To love the first angel I’ve set
my eyes upon-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To lose an angel, no matter how
phoney, to a social heaven.”

- enriko. aug 5. 11:45pm

Testing:
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Sibilance,
Sibilance,
Hello,
Hell­o
Yo!

I wish I could formulate-
into poems and stories,
fiction and film
the way your eyes
show the innocence of love
and the vulnerability of trust.
I lost myself when I found you-
in the most extreme way
I found double entendre's
inside your tone of voice
and sibilance in your silence.
But it was never your intent
it was and has always been
my greatest downfall
putting more into others
than I will ever get back in return.
Slowly, I am crawling back to
the skin I used to find comfort in
and the smile I used to hide behind.
You brought me out from underneath
the mask I had spent years painting
beneath my eyelids
and above my cheekbones.
The scars from my old skin have faded,
but the wounds from my mind are still present.
It may take some time
but I will form a new exterior
and it will no longer be just a mask
I will run far from the person
that didn't quite love herself
and I will run into your arms
no more self harm.

My heartbeat ticks like a clock on most days
the pounding of my chest reminds me I don't have much time left
I start to wonder why being shaped like an hourglass is such a good thing.
We are always running out of time.
So much so that we don't even count when we reach a mile-
in high school they train you to keep time
but somehow you always end up running and running away from it.
Other kids shamed you for not completing the mile fast enough-
but your body thanked you for not pushing it so hard.
There are days when my alarm wakes me up before the sound comes
like my body somehow knows my time for sleep has ran out.
Things are constantly running away from me-
kind of like you.
I try to slow down the hands to this clock
but as yours wrap around my waist
it only speeds things up for me
because I no longer pay attention to the sound of my heartbeat.
Yours is the only ticking I can hear on those days.
I find myself using too many metaphors
and not enough alliteration or sibilance-
or any other methods of poetry for that matter.
I am too busy organizing these thoughts too quickly
so they do not run too fast away from me.
My mind is something I'm always trying to catch-
trying to keep these emotions in order and on cue
so I don't run out of time with you.
But somehow I end up losing it,
all of it and I am on the brink of insanity again
because how can you feel secure
when you don't know how much time you are wasting
I do not want to waste all this time with you.
If I am just another hour on this clock of your life
it will be the best **** hour you will ever encounter
because the rest of mine are spent trying to place
these emotions that have run out on me.
Spent trying to learn how to keep time,
how to keep them in mind
how to not let them change who I am again.
But see these emotions are not an alarm clock-
they are a pop quiz
an erupting volcano that has been dormant for years,
a hurricane you knew was coming but you weren't sure when,
an hour of detention that goes by so painfully slow
you contemplate your entire life.
These emotions don't come every other sunday-
they don't become planted in the soil inside of me
and sprout when I water them.
They are the dust that collects under your bed
from the particles of your skin-
and you don't know they are there
until you clean out the things you've been meaning to for a while.
My life is all metaphor and not enough logistics.
Not enough order and routine-
the only thing keeping me is time
and the dust has settled again.
It had rested in the lining of my lungs
and sits in the bridge of my nose-
it won't be long until it collects and overflows
and I am dealing with the consequences of not keeping
this life in order, in detail, I made no room for cleanliness.
There is no freedom inside of this mess,
inside of this wristwatch that will not leave
even when I try to cut it off.
The ticking of the clock is all I hear-
it aligns perfectly with the sound of my heartbeat.
I fear it will stop ticking
I fear I will stop feeling
I fear this heart will stop beating.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Tick.

You require at least three similes.
A metaphor or two.
This section needs more sibilance,
and another allegory on alliteration too.

Creative writing
now a standardized test
where a poet seems
to do slightly poorer than the rest.

You receive a checklist, told
bye and buy the book.
Drain away the colours upon your pencil
or face the examiners sickle and hook.

Creative writing
now a slog a convoluted use and reuse
of that which
"improves"
your descriptions and inscriptions.

You need a conclusion.


something befitting a happy end.
Try anything smart
and a bad grade i'll be "sure to send."

times like this, the plenary moon
  tonight wearing many faces,

the white-washed truant at bay
    white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
   of say, prongs of fire on the kiln

the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
  what the heat of placeness mints underneath
  our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
  remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.

we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of  light’s bendable
   rondure harnessing a truth we let in.

I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
  by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
  past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
  like a well-oiled machine.  what do you hear?

  we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
  or the wild sibilance of breath trying  to  utter something,
  going back home with a song in between teeth,
    without words.