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fray narte Apr 2020
she saunters to the room
in white sundress and boots —
some girl bukowski would probably write about.
her heart, stitched to her sleeves,
leaving her chest
smothered with lilacs and cigarette smoke.

how do you know you got embers
that can start a forest fire
when all that matters
is walking straight to the arms
of a storm dressed as another girl —
a girl dressed as another storm
leaving behind casualty after casualty
after casualty
in leaky apartments and hotel rooms.

well,
poets don't tell you how storms kiss —
how they're made of moonlight,
dripping like ether on a sea glass
and before you know it,
your skin is the sea, reaching,
yielding with total abandon
to every curling of the tongue,
to chapped lips and to sighs.

this must be
what 'it' looks like.

then again,
bukowski never really wrote that much about love,
and it's no secret;

her feet are no altars
to offer your poems
and darling,

your lips are not where
storms go to rest.
13 Apr 2020
reading his work always puts me in a good mood  

reminds me  
of how simple words  
can bear  
complex meanings  

how insignificant  
ambitions  
in the grand  
yet not  
scheme of things  
mean nothing  

the endless cycle  
repeating  
mistake after mistake  
until the lesson  
eradicates itself  

making excuses  
telling lies  
self medicating  
as though  
vitality depends on it  
/it doesn’t/

leaving
infectious afterthoughts  
before you can draw conclusions  
but not after  
you have already submitted  
to the beautiful mind  
that made you wonder  
why nobody listened  
not enough, anyway.
Posted on April 4, 2020
Jana Chehab Mar 2020
Zodiac signs have failed to tell
of an epoch of limerence waiting ahead
neither could a compass navigate
a homesick constellation to its rightful cell
and yet I travel, swim, and tread
on a glimpse of you
on a foreign thread
on a beacon of fury to accommodate

Epiphany emerged
the world’s ablaze
mnemonic particles floated again
Astral projection took its toll
your skin reached out and took the fall

I oft hear sounds; my sonorous wails
my sword-of-a-body
and my serrated edges
drove them away
but there you were
a scabbard of steel
to engulf and congeal
to hold and to heal

Alpha Cephei has got nothing on you
you became the star that ruled the Earth
the right hand of the northern pole
the right hand I chant my paean for
you were 49 light years away
until you adhered to my directions

My roots will cease to loosen their grip
on your light rays and elysian touch
on what I crave, yearn, and long
for you are the home that got me stuck
and you are the space where I belong
Thomas W Case Feb 2020
Death is stalking me.
It watches me play cards,
smoke cigarettes, and
drink beer.
It took my parents, two
brothers, and all my friends.
It got Chris last week.
20 bottles of whiskey in
seven days, I suppose that
would **** anyone.
They found him on the
railroad tracks.
Death is stalking me.
I won't cheat it.
I won't escape it;
but before it gets me,
I bet I finish
this poem.
Thomas W Case Feb 2020
Hook him up to the machine.
Shock his brain into
mediocrity.
Death stalks him;
he is aware.
There is too much
flash in his eyes.
His brain needs a reboot;
he needs to forget,
like a goldfish, like
a monkey in the zoo.
Hook him up to the machine.
He is too sentimental.
Salmon swim in his blood;
he has a paisley heart,
and a tie-dye soul.
He can smell colors.
Hook him up to the machine.
He has Van Gogh eyes, and
a Bukowski gut; he walks
like he's lost in a maze;
hunchback sadness,
butcher knife nerves,
Hook him up to the machine.
He believes in love,
and has too much trust.
His vivid green memory
is a curse, we need to
crash it, **** the eternal spring.
Hook him up to
the machine.
we all go crazy sometimes
Thomas W Case Feb 2020
Drinking has been an exercise in
lunacy and sorrow,
like jumping off a cliff,
for tomorrow's dead dreams.
The fruit of the vine should
be sweet and sentimental,
like mamas and moonlight.
With a fistful of memories and
a soul full of pain,
I try it all again;
I chase the phantom.
Alcoholism is hell.
Mandi Wolfe Dec 2019
The shallow words you offer now
will never begin
to fill the deep chasms
you've eroded into me.
Me.
My person.
Into the heart, soul, bones, brain, sinew of
Me.
When we were still new
you had already begun
to chip away at
Me.
But you said
with each raise of your maul
“I love you
and I would never
do anything to hurt
you.”
No one
but NO ONE
had ever loved
Me.
before.
I opened myself wide
and you crawled inside
to make yourself a home in
Me.
I was empty before then
and still I am empty.
According to Bukowski
I should have let you ****
Me.
PoetLeChatelier Nov 2019
“I have been trying to get laid
So should I try lacing up my suspenders and get my *******,
for another fifty shades of drinking a Harlem shake to the
piece of cake fairy tale of nagging paper trail just to impress a **** pony tail
at the dark alley bakery, vending her own cookie with a tight shoulder skirt to this lions in search of an empire from a leverage  point to cleavage, Torching the alley with a naked thigh just like tossing a coin into a fountain in a circus with clown with umbrella about throw some shade until when the tides go out to, you get to know who’s been swimming naked upon the pleasures that are bitter to swallow to this blood ******* roaches chasing strangers who would spread her legs to the canvas and induce seduction as a color scheme……..
She called me sadist and I called myself a dreamer,
She dreamt of pushing me off the bed and calling me a screamer
She envisioned cutting my throat and playing jazz with my vocal chords
She fantasied sarcastically caressing my cuticles just because last night I came in short of breath

Previously
She would sell her own soul to the syringe of morphine drip
for a denial shot that pain heals in the prefix of an outpatient  rehab
now in the bathtub nursing in patient withdrawal ,
She would tie a shoe string around her bicep in search of vein,
so as to squeeze the **** libido version of limbo to oblivion
humiliating the dark clouds begging for a shooting star
to the pages that frustrates the pen unto the novel that prescribes a prenuptial of black bride killing the reader’s digest and buries their heads…………..so……………………

I am becoming a book.
that will induce an ****** with sympathy veil of beggar feeding on their own horses
to the end of the caterpillar misery is **** butterfly confetti to script that syncs the readers perception
Into the ****** abuses of the needle that impregnates the ink and tells the canvas to go get paternity test throughout the history of melting medusa lips
that made a homeless robin without a hood painting a revolution in this concrete jungle
where dreams are made up from silence thought that can
ambush a hive softy through whistling that melts
a bee’s temper in the presence of a queen is a poisonous sting of a artist
dipping his own brush into his own soul with a healing dew that never bruises
the honey in the vein of the garden is the beauty of the wine  
From a vine to flower is a grape in the glass is anarchy

From what I am running from
To misery flowing from the river on
That’s why we are here
To profile the lost identity from the art of war that sun Tzu was afraid of losing his head to another thigh!
That’s why we are here
To profile the slit of the dress that curved the sword another napoleon to conquer Soviet Union
That’s why we are here
To profile a love Ballard from contortionist that melted medusa eyes from cold to flexible
Revolution will wear a mini skirt, squat and kiss the lepers hands for the Benjamin’s banking dump jokes...and still hire Johnnie Cochran for second ****** trial of O.J Simpson ……………
That’s why I still want …………………………….



our culture wore a fabric of circus clothes only dance in the arena like a puppet from the strings of the servants chasing a redemption in the den of thrones getting thrown to the game of throne for guilty pleasure as kings daughters were gambling upon gladiators death to the freedom of escaping their own Sobibor that chopped off my foot in the life of Kunta Kinte
Slavery was blushing teeth with a **** moan of a cigarette smoke
Flirting to the horrors of unshaved groins,
from the growing pains in the hands that planted olive trees
to labor and harvest their oil that has become tears of
cowards staining heaven with obscene imagery of their own likeness
holding their insights captive upon the eyes of the ******
Until our backs were a canvas of whips and brutality, we had tattoos
of pain and graffiti of blood as written the book blue skies
claiming the prepare the way the Lord, judging Esther from a supremacy attire of poverty
termed to be isolated from the world where the corner stone fell into the wrong hands and built a
Tower of babel for the Pharisee living in a glass house



Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal to pleasure
the urges out of the Garden of Eden, Adam had to seek leaves to live with eve,
From a mustard seed renouncing the deception ought to praise the womb that gave birth to the blood sweat and tears to the system planting snares pig’s ears and fears ,
with intent to subdue the cat inside the bag from the smell of the rat that has been suffering a broken rib
We used ashes as lotion to conquer the scratching pains of the unhearing wounds eying the staff that turned into a serpent in exodus to the stiff neck of the system after the death of Moses….we had to succumb to victory,


There was a story of how soldiers got hungry
in the battlefield even they started feeding on themselves
Fighting for peace in the pieces of human meat...
upon pawns that have kept chasing the salvation of in the story that was
made by rats that fought all the dogs and killed the cats is like
Judging a fish with its own abilities to climb trees from the a shadow of small boy reflecting an elephant in the room with betrayal that made Julius have a seizure after gambling with another’s man
life with few pieces of silver sealed by a Judas kiss that killed Jesus,
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