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Sky Mar 2016
black words with their black letters
s   u   g    l
  q   i    g      e    across the page

i t ‘ s  ha   rd  f  o   r me to rr e a d
i think my i’s are broken
my I’s are broken
my ie’s
my eyes my eyes i think my eyes are broken
and my head hurts
like the demons inside are
P O U N D I N G
a                       u ll screaming RELEASE MEEEEEE
g                    k                                                    
   a               s
       i nst my

thw ords ar brken
r my hed is brokn
or im brkn

i think
i need
some
s l e e p
z
z
  z
   z
     z
        z
           z
          z
       z
     z
   z
     z
Kelly McManus  Jun 2019
Slaphappy
Kelly McManus Jun 2019
Rocking in my chair
rotating on a boulder
just growing older
                                  Kelly McManus
Laokos 7d
I’m not good enough to write
this poem. these ******* words
won’t come. here I am, feeling
like a dried **** on the grass—
all hard, white and shriveled
obstinately sitting there, surrounded
by all that lush green.
this resistance is a real *******,
sitting on me like a sumo wrestler,
smiling in its power over me.
looking down on me
and controlling me effortlessly.

“you can’t write poetry,
you’re a nobody.
a real lukewarm leftover special.
no one will ever love you.
no one will ever like you.
no one will ever see you.
no one wants you to succeed.
no one wants to read your poetry.
don’t waste your time doing
something you’ll never be good at.
you’re not good enough.
you’re not strong enough.
someone like you could never
be someone like that.
someone like you could never
do something like that.
someone like her would never
love someone like you.
you’re gross,
nobody wants to look at you.
stay home.
don’t do anything.
don’t even try.
give up.”


I mean, this guy’s got a million
of these bumper stickers
and he slaps them all over
the inside of my car
all day, every day—
that is, when he’s not using
my chest as a seat cushion.
it’s gotten to the point where
I now can’t see out of my windshield.
I just wanna go somewhere
but he won’t let me see
where I’m going.
he won’t stop talking.
I can’t hear the music anymore.
I don’t know where I am.
I can’t breathe.
I just know that this car feels
more like solitary confinement
than freedom and the a/c
stopped working a long time ago.

I think I need to stop the car.
I need to open the door
and step out into the light.
I don’t even need to take
off the bumper stickers,
I think I just need to walk
for a while—
move at my natural rhythm again.
like children do before
we start in on them.
before we start building their car
around them and teaching them
to believe in it.

this is you.
you are this car.
except when you’re alone,
then maybe you can leave
the car but never in public,
never in front of other people.
this car will protect you from
them, from the world—
from yourself.
hide in it.

well, I left my car
on the side of the road
some ways back
with the keys in it
and a full tank of gas.
the door’s open,
take it if you need it.
hell, take it if you want it,
I don’t give a ****—
just don’t try
to pick me up in it
if you ever catch up.

                      signed,
                                 ­ 
                               nobody


P.S. watch out for the fat guy in the diaper.
1.
This hunger artist cannot read
volumes of printed material fast enough
to satiate an immense appetite
and unquenchable thirst
to acquire learning from
the millenniums gushing fount of
cumulative chance revelations,
(or deliberate intent to validate
a premise vis a vis via
private investigative research),
thus unwittingly setting alight
an intense inquisitiveness sans
this curious George primate
experiencing the equivalent
of mental non fallacious
figurative enthusiasm analogous to:
patriotism, phototropism, priapism...),
whose every waking hour,
(when not tending toward
the basic needs for survival
as a seeming foreigner -
journey ying in this helter skelter,
madcap, slaphappy, whirled wide web)
expended to enrich the yawping
immeasurable volume mine fist size
housed cerebellum buzzfeeds
shrouded within skull and cross bones,
a vast scope of innumerable chunks
of fascinating, fortifying, and fulfilling
various subject matters,
that when pursued
to an approximate logical conclusion
yields abundant esoteric information.

These sundry shiny, salutary
nuggets of wisdom send a surge
within this once
a pawn a time white knight
(holed up in his rook re:)
of ******* sensations
coursing throughout each
neuron and axon of this gourmand
famished for (imagine if you will)
overflowing platters full of
juicy, fruity, and bounty tea full volumes
of incredible edible raw bits
2.
(toothsome incredible mental edibles
satiating faux lower
and upper indentured craving
most satisfactorily) with byte size tidbits
of savory, tasty, ultimately vaunted
mouthwatering hors d'oeuvres teasing me
to such fancy feast ohm my dog
amp pulley serving one godaddy
gloriously heightening inexplicable
joie de vivre keen longing making
tongue lick lips in anticipation
to partake from Smörgåsbord
of expansive culinary cuisines.

Though nada lick of evidence concluded
that hair color plays a role,
(especially plait tin ham),
I chose an arbitrary hue
(without arbitration, deliberation,
or genuflection) hair raising experiment
to be illegally blonde - courtesy
of hydrogen peroxide
as a last ditch effort to increase
the rate my noggin can absorb
page after page of sought after
printed information, less
to impress anybody, but more so
to satisfy an incessantly voracious
yen to understand, which
(as a minor side effect) possibly
increases the weight of thine
sixty plus shades of gray cerebral matter.

Thee correlation asper whether
a lighter tinted non natural tone
of genetically decreed follicles
(sprouting within Ziegfeld Follies
like tender brownian growth -
thread wide spindles in the case of myself),
I certainly experienced, invited,
and measured quantifiable uptick
in incidents involving being queried
as a smart schnorrer in a city
where the streets have no names)
adorning straggly strands
striving superiorly regaling
this Tess T uber ville wondrous tourist
with crackling, popping, and snapping
3.
electrical charges, which (as a side note)
allowed, enabled and provided
a pronounced ability, whereby
contents of pages got vacuumed
within a blink of an eye to imbibe
(without any adverse reaction
of heady inebriation not jeopardizing
body, mind or spirit of Brexit ting
away courtesy Yankee doo dill ling
confounding basic auburn zillions
of tough proteins called keratin.
Arlene Corwin Aug 2020
A quick look at the world around and you understand the theme.      

    Issue: Change

How can one progress
From feeling ****** to slaphappy,
Sourpuss to silly goose.
Powerless, to one empowered
In a second or an hour,
Humdrum life humming along
Where nothing can go wrong,
Cause/effect singing its song.

The laws of life inscrutable.
The only thing assurable is change.
Its mysteries whose histories
Can, one day to the next,
Both enter, exit,
Borders touching or contiguous.
So strange!

As planets move in rings of space,
Galaxies and stars their place,
All you need’s a straight kept face,
Knowing that you absolutely can't erase
An earthly thing.

Change will happen as it will.
It’s just for you to act with inner stillness,
Taking in and on what happens,
To convert it all to happiness.

Issue: Change 2.23.2020; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

— The End —