Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
To hell with maintaining a fire just so faces could be seen.
I danced on the embers extinguishing little stars and I scribbled in my notes and waited for that one girl to shut up about Twitter and Halloween costumes so I could hear—

the fog dragging its tongue up the valley.

Finally she began to realize the contest she was losing,
took the quiet advice of myself and the wind and went
to go tuck herself
into the tent,
into the safety of ceiling.

But,
you and I
opted to be
coyotes on the hillside.

I took the trail away from our sleeping counterparts,
and flayed you on the dirt where I stripped you of your fur,
howling to the fog and plowing valleys in your flesh,
your legs grew into roots, and wove length by longer length
‘round all the sturdy angles, the anchors of my hips
and you, oh you,
you would **** the marrow from my bone.

And when we lay out, raw and steaming
knees bleeding from the drainage ditch,
a gnawing fades out, falls to dreaming,
we, peeling off a well-known itch.
Then we play a game with satellites
Where bouncing mirrors reflect our minds
And laugh when the reflections never fit.

I gather up my skin, step one foot in and
stumble when the tightness traps my leg,
You pin up your *******, to please our sleeping guests
that wouldn’t take to anything irregular.

On the upward hike ten million lights, ten million lives
herded on the table of L.A.
A Serengeti of fire, a mass migration;
mammoths marching, tusks dipped in flame

Sitting around campfires once taught vocal apes to rhyme
but a million conversations
bleaches each the other white
and now a million electric campfires
bleaches L.A.’s lower sky.

And though I stomped out ours
the ash remains a scar
where we had nearly forgot
how to speak by choosing to not.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
i actually like the way slavoj žižek understands fascism, given the fourth movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony... as it stands: i really had to take pleasure in my suffering... i once called it: an exquisite pain... it's not that acknowledging pain is difficult, what's difficult is taking pleasure in it... on a whim... nothing as flamboyant as baron sacher-masoch's take on it, transcending toward the ****** thesis... i am the grey matter, the everyday comparison to a factotum sort of analogue of what pain constitutes... and i'm actually free from depressive apathy... i am sometimes prone to laugh like i might be experiencing what the Fore women experienced... the kuru "disease", otherwise known as the creutzfeldt-jakob "disease"... yes... mm... uncontrollable laugher... akin to St. Vitus' dance... sydenham's chorea.. it's hard to see why there should be any cure to the experience... given that the experience is so liberating and has no materialistic mono-mania of a well tended to economy... cannibalism really has a great array of noun-arsenal... a bit like the poetry of Christianity it's akin to... to really believe this *******: you have to take it to the extremes and make every word: utterly isolated, and in a sentence utterly meaningless... it's like a swarm of wasps honing in on a body of a bear that mistook its ash-phlegm nest for a beehive feast... sometimes it happens... but sure as all else concerning: why not take pleasure in an anti-cross crucifixion, i.e. a sick-bed? sure, it's less theatre and many less marble statues worthy of a church... but, if according to žižek / rzirzek / really? ź ż vs. ž... a fascists takes pleasure from suffering... i must be in this club, since i do, the pain in my brain with its sizzling quiz of blood emeshed in synapses has moved to my *******... ******* ahoy! i sit in a chair, and when drink (esp. when drinking): they are goosebump prone, titilating me... amusing me... all the pain concerning my brain has moved into a pleasure reaction bound to the testicles... i couldn't have foreseen this waterfall if i didn't explore the word fascist beyond the communal horror of spotting an orthodox practitioner in either street or cyber-space...

e.g. the fore of papua new guinea
(ghee-knee... later the debated about
quinoa... apparently it's not qui-
       or french agree, we-noah...
  but something else... oh, it's related to a quiz
asking me whether i could possibly be a 5% liberal
elitist... well, if you were reading
the sunday times magazine: it would ask you
that... i did cut it apart as qui- -noa...
  but apparently it's pronounced:
kin-wah...                 once again my point:
you don't use highly concentrated phonetic
units, i.e. diacritical marks...
you're bound to leisure in this linguistic hell
of constantly "correcting" people....
just saying... what's the matter, toad stole
your burp?)

   and i really wanted to write a neat poem...
poems like this emerge,
you go to a shop, by the cheapest whiskey
two cans of beer and a bottle of cola...
it's early February... the cars parked
have the eerie circumstance of jack o'fogfrost
breathing onto the windows...
    your fingers itch from the cold...
you start to really see a skeleton walking
rather than something resembling protein
fat and carbohydrate...
    thankful for winter: to naturally imagine
a skeleton walk in the cold
   smoking a cigarette and drinking the beer
while the whiskey cools in your rucksack...
all you end up needing is
   a square mile, and outer English suburbia...
and a look into that forest you once frequented
walking as if with gauged eyes into
the custard darkness...
   then sitting on a stump, taking all the clothing
items from your torso and listening in
as something neared, cracked a branch
and you uttered into the forest:
  no animal would dare come so near...
      
... (man has to drink, take a break...
         sneaky ******* get to see
a work in progress... lucky them...
           too much of a sober me)...
hey! i'm warming the stove, it's not going to
shoot out firecrackers made from words
into a
     hoghmony celebration.... oh look...
another googlewhack!
      http://tinyurl.com/z8xeqpsn
(billionth of another! this is how i play the "lottery")
ah freckle feckle ****... scoot for new years...
hogmaney...  hogmoney...
  hagmanny...
                 ­  ****! Hogmanay!
    what was i "saying"?
                            
ah wait... i know... i know...
i was watching this film goat (2016)....
with james francko doing cameo but mainly producing...
if anything could put you off going to
university, well, notably an american university
it's this film... now i drink, i really do, heavily...
but what went on in that film was nothing short
of happens when people lack any respect for liquor...
i could watch the roman empire in a zoo...
what i witnessed in this film was:
well... can't see a point of caging a lion,
but i can see all the reason for caging man...
but the problem arises with:
you can take children to a zoo...
          you couldn't even want a child
to experience this sort of Iraqi **** made in
America...
                       i drink, i really do...
i slurped on a prostitutes ****** when drunk...
hell... i even wrote this...
          and i am really starting to believe
that going to university was the worst mistake of my life...
i left it, educated as a chemist,
without a clear move toward a career as a chemist...
    would i care to learn the use of language
to university level? i.e. get an english degree?
      not if i were a middle-class woman
   who's daddy was a doctor or a dentist...
                            people from my background,
double that up with a father who works in construction
and me being of immigrant stock (when will i get
to say expat?) -
  it was the biggest mistake of my life...
you see... other immigrants start to get jealous...
     they say you have to die: for raising for head
above the water...
         a bit like they kicked the hell out of
Jamie Redknapp's career in football...
now he's a pundit... but not a football player...
they smacked him about...
good thing my grandfather was a Silesian miner
for some time... i decided to dig trenches...
yes, metaphor: write poems...
   because i still can't see what nature ordained me
to possess... and why these little hitlers decided wasn't
fair for their "sense of worth"... oh i can name them...
one of them, a childhood sweatheart of a friend,
egyptian / persian, used to call me during
weekdays and sing to me over the phone...
   apparently he could ******* 20 times a day...
i tried 4 times in one day... nothing came out...
      the other was an add on to being in school from
the age of 16 to 18... a paddy-sikh...
   loved barrington levy and driving a car while
******... loved the whole gansta gimmick...
a complete *******...
                           and to think i was fooled into their
little of jealousy... this will make absolutely no sense
to you... given we (a) never spoke outside the realm
of my tornado... and (b) had a coffee?
               well... let's just say: one stupid move on
my behalf while intoxicated on marijuana
aged 21 taught me all i needed to know...
  from the age of 21 through to the age i am now:
some could consider me a monk...
                 or that infamous word: cenobite -
oh i'm just obsessing about how i want to
put my top 3 picks into classic.fm's hall of fame,
and write 3. christopher young's something to think about,
2. christopher young's something to think about...
1. christopher young's something to think about...
as i realised the past two days...
  collecting a personal library of classical music
makes no sense... unless it's Händel... (æ, i.e. :)...
and classical music only makes sense
with a d.j., and yes: a radio...
            there's no point being poncy about classical
music when you collect it...
        unless it might be something by Hans Zimmer
or any other movie soundtrack...
      and you can just sit back, listen to the radio,
and the classics just come and come...
i spent today lying in bed, because classic.fm
was playing from about 6am to about 1pm...
  and then i extended it to 3pm because
of aled jones and the voice so necessary as
that of alexander armstrong... in between?
                     bill turnbull... a news anchor
if i'm not mistaken... couldn't handle it...
  no, not the voice: the choice of music...
but even such people are absolutely necessary...
and would anyone care to remember
the ****** megastore on oxford street?
  the classical music department?
does anyone remember is being sealed off by
   glass like an aquarium from all the other music
genre departments in the store?
   a bit like walking into a lunatic asylum:
everything had to be cork-lined waiting for a Proustian
novel... first you had to appreciate
and build up a palette for silence... before
some concerto could be "ate" like refined sushi...
    radio and classical music does work,
i might have made a mistake collective obscure tastes,
i.e. proto-folk examples in Polish and compositions
of German industrial music...
   i might have done that... yeah, so true with the jazz...
but you have to have a Houdini weak-spot...
so in bed... rummaging through the radio and
television listings and reviews...
   after doing a bit of a crossword (which i can't
for the love of god) and a 6 x 6 su doku...
        now that's definitely sunday activity...
looking through the radio and tv listings...
   esp. noting the day's programme of bbc radio 4...
well, it's not that i'm a convert, with a house
in south-west london...
                i just heard that england is famous
for its eccentrics... i wanted to experience
    the most eccentric practice on these isles...
      tending to a garden would have made sense...
if it wasn't February...
   so reading the listings and reviews was the next
best thing...
    what with confusing Aled Jones with Alex Jones...
that famous britpop bassist turned cheese-maker.

then how do you begin taking fatal
mortal steps, simply motivated by biological
dynamics? i could have ended that
servitude to the waterfall, or should
i correct myself: required it to continue...
      but then interludes in the case of opera
leave me peasant-like, most ignoble...
      there's the 15 minutes were no fame is mentioned,
and no one forces art to become advert...
   since we're talking of the thin-red-line,
i can't but help myself reading more book reviews
in English, than actual books in Polish...
because i care for the cognitive labourers,
i really do... i think they are needed
to bypass actual books, meaning they do all
the work... or should i say arbeiten?
well.. enough critics about, you get to
dissociate yourself from the actual origin...
     a bit like waving your hand at god
and embracing the "awe" inspiring profusion
of the human tongue becoming over-bearing...
not even bearing grudges...
  but no gratitudes either...
                it just is what you care to make of
germans the sole originators of
   the proto "bayeux" tapestry given a.i. -
but then you treat the germans as they
are currently given the sway,
and you awake a humanity in them:
a humanity only germans know how
to acknowledge: a collectivisation -
germans know no concept of individualism
akin to the late-removed isle Saxons...
i.e. the English... the English are always
blitzkrieg specific about the individual,
the fact that so many individuals get a chance to vote
leasves me with blisters of what i can best
estimate as noted to being conscience...
          the germans are best appropriate to
express the volk... the english are like stuffed
animals worshiping the name Byron... Milton...
Blake... Newton...
         and let's leave them there, because if they
finally manage a homogeny of an ethnic
accord to give a momentum unto it via their lack
cohesion... i am assured a passage to
the houses of parliament to laugh,
as a test of my carve to veto, rather than vote.
mainland europe calls them: the islanders!
you can't help but see a care to blow up
the tunnel la mange... the channel tunnel...
because if a 2nd ****** arose...
the tanks would flod that serene countryside...
     i come across foxes all the time...
once i picked a dead fox near the bus station
in romford using two bin bags from the nearby skip...
and walked with it home, weighed it,
just under 10 kilograms... i weighted myself first,
then with the dead fox enclosed in the bin bags...
then i walked with the fox and threw it into
a meadow... i was thinking along the lines:
at least the sanitation officer will have a day off..
  obviously i was tattooed with the idea that
i was some sort of shaman, given two people witnessed
me picking up the corpse...

900 gull herrings eating their own...
      chimanzees also take to a nibble...
        banana slug females are fond of eating
"******", when the mating gets heavy...
not ever, as ever, but with Darwinism had i ever
managed to see a woman like a mantis...
  sorry... looking at the ***-hole of nature like that
will eventually leave you paralysed and
not even awe-struck but fear-woken...
             because it really can't be so much a desire
to look at it as if it was necessarily needing
incorporation, but was necessarily incorporated
nonetheless...
         the ogasawara incident... 1945...
       yoshio had a fine fine palette...
                          cannibalism was never suggested
as equivalent of a war crime...
  and one said: human thighs tasted like chicken,
another said: a bit like raw tuna...
          judeo-christian food prohibitions...
    well... once the prohibitions come along with
the poetry... left can mean right...
and right will evidently mean left...
                 during the yuan dynasty...
         pedohpiles were more or less reductive in
their transgressions... they ate more: than they ******.
two freedoms then, china prone to omnivore status
and hindustan prone to vegetarianism...
               both examples lead to a success rate of
a billion examples...
                       it's only these pest-like infections of
mono-this omni-that are keen to always give their
i love yous as politico dictates...
  maxims even... so very fond they are: of their maxims...
they even infected their youth in the 21st century
stating that: no one is akin to us,
if not in his youth, having been ***** by abou10
10 favourite maxims... most kept, hardly any employed...
1261 edict: when children were asked to stop
plucking out their eyeballs...
   horror films are therefore, equivalent to soft-core
******... history is thrice over the real horror movie...
    but given our faculty of memory is so
(putting it mildly) "biased"... i think we're over-sensitive
in giving imagination the scenes from both
horror and Disney... we've already gave the former
and the latter we have just sold...
           but hey! a placentta fry-up like a setting sun,
illuminates with more choice of hue than
noon and the "dehydrated" shadow (yes,
i know, a better word would be suited, but i have
no time to ascribe it to a tailor-fitting, a neat and tidy
resonance... treat dehydrated as a dwarf shadow,
mingle that with photon and phonetic -
that light illuminates, and traps things into bites,
like H or He denote hydrogen and helium
respectively... and qui- and -noa denote
necessary argument of what sound goes where,
rightly)...

evidently i did take the quiestionnaire about
whether i am a liberal elite...
it had to be done... why would i otherwise read a sunday
newspaper?
            end result? 0-50 (norm), 51-100 (aspiring),
    101-150 (not quiet there), >150 (elitist snob)...
(ref. the 5%, charles murray, coming apart,
   the bell curve... superzips)
q1: what is the top prize in the thunderball and when
is it drawn?
   a1: i play the googlewhack lottery.
      alt. a1: 0 (alright), 5 (days rights), 10 (what is thunderball?)
             talk of chav tax...
q2: how many people in your vicinity voted for
    Brexit?
    a2: i just had an opinion... voting is cheap
when you can't express a ballot veto.
   alt. a2: 0 (all of them), 5 (one or two)... 10 (aghast at the question)
              a bit ******* obvious, no point explaining....
q3: what is your favourite dish on th
MARK RIORDAN May 2017
PRESIDENT TRUMP AND MALCOLM TURNBULL
WILL NOW MEET AT LAST
WILL THE PHONE CALL THEY HAD
BRING BACK A CONVERSATION FROM THE PAST


NORTH KOREA WILL BE ON THE TABLE
THE MANUS ISLAND DEAL AS WELL
CAN THESE TWO GIANTS AGREE
WELL ONLY TIME WILL TELL


BUT ONE THING WILL BE FOR SURE
PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOOTS FROM THE HIP
PRIME MINISTER MALCOLM TURNBULL
SHOULD ENJOY HIS COLOURFUL TRIP
THE 2 GIANTS FINALLY MEET IN NEW YORK AT TRUMP TOWER MALCOLM TURNBULL AND PRESIDENT TRUMP LETS HOPE ALL IS GOOD.
~
June 2024
HP Poet: BLT (William Turnbull)
Age: 58
Country: USA


Question 1: A warm welcome to the HP Spotlight, Bill. Please tell us about your background?

BLT: "I'm the prototypical jack of many trades, master of none. I've been in retail, the paint business, wine/beer sales, a Director of Security, running entire firms and their staff and am currently a Pest Control Technician."


Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

BLT: "I've been writing for about 35 years regularly, but for about 8 on a daily basis. My first poem was about the Fates- for a 10th grade English assignment. We spent 9 weeks on Greek Mythology, then 9 more on Roman. I did not know I could write. Having had a tumultuous and trauma filled childhood, this knowledge was quite beneficial to my personal well being and mental health. I have been a member for about 4 years, I believe."


Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

BLT: "I am inspired by most anything. A solitary word or phrase heard in conversation. A sound. A whisper. Once moved, I simply must write. I call it word bees. They sting me mercilessly until I jot them down. Unlike most poets, if the piece becomes difficult- if the words do not flow, I most often abandon the project. I feel it is not genuine. I never want my works to sound forced or 'driven' by the rhyme. Also, unlike most of the well-learned and incredibly talented poets/writers here, I am NOT well read. Poe and Shakespeare, yes. But very limited consumption of the masters."


Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

BLT: "Poetry, to me is an avenue for release. For creativity. For expression. I most often write to myself. I am so very grateful for Hello Poetry, as I am able to share my drivel. I have never felt like I belong in such grand company but have always been thankful for the inclusion."


Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

BLT: "My favorite poets here include Jamadhi Verse, Pradip, Carlo, Thomas Case, Old Poet(Mike), Guy, Lori and Patty. So many different styles of poetry. So many with so much to say."


Question 6: What other interests do you have?

BLT: "I have a YouTube channel dedicated to Miami Dolphin parody songs, though I have many original pieces there, too. I have always loved to sing and write lyrics. My dream is to have one of my songs purchased by a real artist. I do NOT write anywhere else. I have looked at other sites, and to be quite honest, find them lacking."


Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much for allowing us this opportunity to get to know the person behind the poet, Bill! We are honored to include you in this ongoing series!”

BLT: "Thank you for all you do cultivating the community and supporting so many poets. You are the flower ***... we are the seeds."



Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know BLT a little bit better. I surely did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez

We will post Spotlight #17 in July!
~
Here's the link to BLT's YouTube channel:
https://youtube.com/@billsbangers3251?si=wlv9lsREVDxUgc0y

Below are some of BLT's favorite poems and links to each one:

The Entire 'Another ******' Series:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4133121/the-entire-another-******-series/

Translucently Inherent:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4171006/translucently-inherent/

Melancholy: Sadness Prevails:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4127883/melancholy-sadness-prevails/

Secret in The Swamp:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4134776/secret-in-the-swamp/

Neon Signs:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4240791/neon-signs/

Black Water:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4240783/black-water/

— The End —