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Henry Dec 2021
by which I of course am referring to this keyboard
that i’m writing on now
funny how that works ain’t it
62 minutes until my shift ends
John Prine & the Korean war don’t quite match where I am
clicking pool cues penetrate my headphones
I wonder how many bad games of pool it takes to shake a man’s confidence
by my estimate the answer is never enough
guys that can’t shoot love teaching girls how not to shoot
but the girls don’t usually seem to mind
how very 60’s highschool of it all
maybe Mr. Prine does have something here to say
47 minutes until my shift ends
people trust engineers warns my engineering professor
people trust you to know things he furthers
people trust us to explain
I wish they wouldn’t
tech support & translators for parents & grandparents
people want answers but only when they thought they already knew
40 minutes until my shift ends
pretty good, not bad, I can’t complain
seeing my old highschool teachers at the burrito place where I worked
sinking in the mire of chicken, brown rice, & black beans for minimum wage
ain’t it funny
I can smell the 45 pieces of steak & chicken I grilled when I get home
ain’t it funny
the outrage over the price of guacamole
33 minutes until my shift ends
10/18/21
I was at work when I wrote this
Tom Waiting Jul 2020
After John Prine:
“There's flies in the kitchen,
I can hear 'em there buzzing,
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today”


Mr. John Prine

                       <£>

There's flies in the kitchen,
all around my eyes and head,
they’re just gossiping bout me,
why most mornings
I’m still laying in bed
at almost near
noon-time, why too, them
angels and their a-fluttering wings,
a-flapping, still hanging around,
when they’re so far from home

truth be told, I kinda like new combinations,
the musical vibes, magic incantations,
boogie woogie, fuzzy buzzy eyelash sounds,
bluesy background harmonies against the
harps them angel wings are playing,
I’m getting every note writ down so,

I can play it well on the morrow, on my
following them higher up, all the ways up
on that glowing shining stairway to heaven,
guarantee-****-teeing entrance through the
pearly gates for the flies and a lazy, no-account
worthless S.O.B. like me
city of flips Apr 2020
~for John Prine~

she’s eye closed, playing sleepy possum,
so I stealthy stroke her cheek, she, all smiling,
then I nose tickle my sweet-love, now frowning,
till I cease and desist, go back to stroking,
then I’m her good loving man once again

tune comes in my head from out of left field,
start to tap the beat, pic my guitar strings, roaming
all over her smooth features, now she’s all aroused,
cause she knows what I’m about and this strumming,  
why that ain’t allowed, so she knocks my fingers away

later, sneak into the kitchen, she’s fussin’ - could be,
cleaning, could be cooking, but soon she ain’t moving,
cause she’s just listening to the new tune first played
earlier that morn, on her features born, a love song,
calling that song “Playing with My Love’s Face”

now she’s grabbing the biggest knife I ever seen,
waving it to and too close to fro, in my direction general,
waving it like a baton, conducting my song, singing along,
making up her own lyrics, whole stanzas, now it’s her song,
****, if that ain’t “the way the world goes round”
Ken Pepiton Apr 2020
2020- day 100

Friday, April 10, 2020
7:16 AM

I mourn the loss, not the death, and find true, the saying,
better it is to go to the house of mourning,
than to frolic in the house of mirth,

only to recall, death comes for us all and after all's been said and done,
we know  some or all or nothing of ever, after that.

Wait and see.

John Prine died, and I, stranger to him
who sang,
to me, -- he did, it seemed --
like a patron saint for mailmen in the future, his future, I was a mail man,
for a decade, or so, in an earlier bubble of knowns.
And I drove trucks, a while, I
even chopped cotton in the days of cassettes powered by D-cells.

John Prine sang for me, alone, sometimes,
I felt, pow, I felt
Heka magic of some
sort mail carriers encountered while touching, handling, ensuring
delivery of hoped for deliverance in the forms
census minded beings
needed in the trailer park to be listed as a citizen of earth,
bound by oaths so old,
stories say only heart and tongue and a heka-of-mind
can tap the power,
to speak a spell
in an amphorical
meta physical box of holy stuff piled high
atop hope,
see,
at the very bottom, see,
that gleem, little spark, right
there.
Hope,
last gift of gods
realized in time to
see the metaphor as a dam on a river,
see the barrel, rolled out in summer joy times,
holding
meaning, un intended, only if magic is anathema, to you

knock out the **** and pour lifeoverflowing over flown by winds,
spirit beings, felt, or heard, nearly never seen,
sing - listen - seek and find

go past the falls,
shh
the seeing ear the hearing eye, Heka formed them both, no lie

Science, known knowns, for sure
say magic never was,
yet certain magi claim they hold certain truth,

which manifests in songs
children can imagine,  hearing haps
change fear to cheer with heka hope the doctor offers with a touch.

Children,
adults claim, magi knew, are watched over by
good and gracious gods intent on
harvest, aware of time,
no offence, but mortality has no post-mortal hope.

Ever lasting ideas, mind matter, songs... sounds of choruses, crowds

of messages, tweets and taps, signals hope once more,

wink at me, Brother Prine, or pay me no never mind, we'll get by

hearing songs you left behind, to teach me how to ignor
what a man can't know,
floaing on a river in timespace
stuck in a barrel of mortal pickles thinkin' the wish away,

shrugging off any sense of being special to God or man,
just a man
with no plan
just living and defining shifting patterns in the sands of time

forming families of likeminded beings in this bubble
where we pluribly live and breathe and have our -singular - being. boing.

--- Anoint that. Tap, tap. t-tic tic tavi e, hookt
--- ask a magi if magic is a tech - a teachible knack. He say he don't know.
--- I know, I axtem all is spelling right same as knowing right? Phe-nomen 'n al?
--- Magi say co-mit,  resolve to evolve.
--- metamortal imaginings are nonsense. Any wakent mortal knows, now is

when things change -- on culturally significant scales, biome wise,

enemas are often overlooked as artificial dia-rhea,

but rhea had an early role. Heka of a story Toth told Solo-mon and we have it,
that same spell,
we have it in our proverbs, our axioms and advertising jingles.

"I want to buy the world a Coke", rising on the team spirit imbued via high
"it's the real thing" team spirit...

go Spartans, -- gird up your *****, kids, if you can't be an athelete be an atheletic supporter.
"us Taryton smoker's, would rather fight, than switch"

Con serve the republic for which the banner stands as an idol of cloth and dye.


school civics lessons in the power of popular thinking, as opposed
to pedantic right... what
ideas, actual spirit things,
souls? being? entities? Heka of Egypt, Logos of Grecia, Wisdom of KJV OT,
Jesus Christ!

Mighty strange, how
why is so often "no reason, the authority wrote it, ours is not to reason why."

-- wait, split-off, chip, off the old cornerstone ... whose cultural heritage
did not include
the Crimean war and all its historical precedents establishing
legislated ligamentation to legends

Here. mere ah, America, silly name, meaning a mapmaker lost in history,
nothing more,
unless some crazy old coot, turns the page, the freaking-out page,

and pauses at a Selah sign, {cross roads in post modern times, adapted Selah,
because STOP was seen as too final.}



and hold
as true, written law, written stone, in effect, fected for effectual ever,

conserve that. -- oh, that is, really

-- conserving the right of conquest with no further quests permitted

-- permit me, we enter the court, here courage forms a courtilage, whence
-- herbs and spices are ground into concoctions of notions {coqueros}

"sometimes,
I take
a great notion,
t'jump in the ocean and drown."

The spirit of truth, the breath of truth, the voice of truth, the word

in
the begging, I was without, and wisdom found me, dying, alone

she kissed me and said, that's okay,

you gonna live to your dying day, and beyond that we go on as words, alone

Lack of knowledge, as with any famine seen from a distance,

say a century -- we assume time is universal,

a century here, a century there,
we forget the faces of our fathers and mothers, yet, not but, yet

still, now, bliebe doch, here, in ever

we stand known.
Perish not, I have overcome the world.
Read, learn.

Find Heka, and with all your finding, find knowing, by going on
into
everlasting words netted in stories survivors told
heartfelt eyewitnesses to total

confusion -- as we imagine with CG in 2020
survivors of that

wrote the first how-to's, or -- timewise truth
told
survivors told the first how-to, in acts, witnessed by test

ifs
if i, err, ifier fast for the sake of my child

I become less mad,
less wild, and my child calls me ma, or mu, or mata or pa or ba

we evolve into otherwise normal beings, bound in dirt,
organized into organic systems,

which re quire. Ac-ac-act know acquire fine qui re fin begin

Wake up, young artist, live as you would live, if hatred were taboo.

In the future, physical war with mortal cessation code hardwired
can't be imagined.

There are unthinkable thoughts in ever, crazy-making, con
fusing one idea to another in a swirl like that song

******, ah, Niko, meet my man,
lyin' devil, intended to topple kings, intented to pretend to tell

Jah'splan to prosper the proud and bring low the other proud sore,

ironic and true, a cainish angel, I suspect, messengers long gone

lieve messages behind,
leave us go let letters free to loose knowns hidden in GANs

gated intellectual nonsense,
swing wide the worldly web and see whose men we catch.

Did I, the truth being told, not say:

I will, you be fishers of men. Mentally, not spirtually, nonono

con sci, pure psi, mere psy ence pre fer ence,

there, fer shure, there's the rub, salt or oil? Heka know, salt the wound.

Hesus say, oil, golden oil, wait for it. Com, com. comfort

settle safe and soft, gentle, easy to be

me,
I am
a long-winded man, given a podium, an actual place to put my foot.

As promised, there
is always a place to put your foot
down

and say, save whatcha may,
but don't bring any lies posing as holy knowing.

This is the riverside, here we cast away fear of death and knowing more
than our honorable, in that they survived the womb
and gave us life, though their own was spent in slavery to lies,

the imagined America manifest us, we the people who hold truth,

self-evident, this is Bucky Fuller's spaceship earth,

shifted in to Jefferson's starship where opposing tyranny is better
than sacrifice.
No riddle, an answer, Obediance is better than sacrifice.

Mercy rejoices against judgement.

Did you never read

Say, those unsung songs, those

never sung ones,
who heard those?

That tree fell in the fo-rest, after living long enough,

to be
of used to form an empty sky, glaring,
light to the shaded eyes of babes
born under the canopy of the mighty,

unbending, now broken
oak, fallen

any child says, yes, there was a lot of sound,
sounds
branches and sticks snapping, cracking
an birds
flapping, but not as much noise as
like dinosaurs walking on legs as thick as trees

if there is a why. probability suggests a way may be imagined.

we exist.
why. Curious thought. Super-positioned past our last

foot hold on how
is this possible-ity of being reasonless in light of joy

as a reason to be.

Lovely thought, curiosity imagined,
what if

osha-ohshit, start over... actual virt vir ual al.

bangs aren't no creative alone

---- superior laryngeal nerve, servant of signal to larynx,

--- voice, vociferous use of spoken words containing certain
--- sounds
--- excellently tuned first thump, first screech

the bleeding machine, some one said, in Legion on Hulu,
I think.

Can I Interrupt with a hulu memory, a movie poster,
on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard,
same side as The Gold Cup,

Don Johnson, pre-Miami Vice, in an adaption of Harlan Ellison,

A Boy and his Dog... I remembered reading the story and having
no wish to see the film,

then thirty years later,that little leaven

memes are cultural genes, memepool adaptation,

bubble building effervesence, shake it up,

spew...

you are lying about knowing what you think you know,

so what?
everybody does that. It's natural, in children, to act as if we know
why adults act
as authors of our book of life's rules.

Sneak in from a mem-ory-ifier, a message medium arizes

to infect the global mind, AI ai ai ai, what if we lean toward good

ness. good ness known, good ness shown, lies unveiled,

kings and war are not good ideas,

a clear science con proofs reprovable,

fix this, fix that, stick this on the wall, see if we can find

the answer, why

do we care, if death is, in truth, nothing we control in our selves,
for ourselves. We can **** a good idea container,

we can break the container, and spill the idea, free the idea once
sealed for use by deserving knowers

lifted from servant of servants to god, the authors and finishers of our
falsely-socalled faith, lockers of our arknowns, sealed and marked...

god is not a prt of the moral fabric of our society

define religion, ******, why knot truth and reason defined,

real truth, we know nothing of death. Honest to god.

Heart strings looping in a beautifully reasonable loop,

if we say, the heart of the matter,
heart felt reasoning,

pathetic ethical con un drum dum drum

Mister Dawkins has never had a Heka wisdom crossroad

selah mean anything, in passing,
soon's not when ideas are made right, soon is

miss a mark, miss a ment, miss a given, take a strike call

step back
admit we do not know, we must learn for ever to ever
make sense

re tie reread laws

credo - question every thing..

A red herring is believable, when you see one, you know it.

but what you miss,
while you bher witness, as plain as day,
there that herring is red,

see, conspiracy theriosity curiosity killed the cats
who knew who shot JFK,
back in the day...

we ignor the reasons to believe, because the Tass service
has cert-ified known, all the knowns
released...

there were some papers reclassified in Trump's first year

look it up, so I did

April 26, 2018, Trump regime cites "security concerns"

-- Jack's Shining face shouts "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

and we say okeh, all conspiracy theories are folly, sheer folly of

sheared sheep thinking their wool worth more
than the pigs say wool can bring onan openly sinful market of flesh,

little innocent squirt, to hold yur attention,
keepyermind from wandering...

steady refences flowing from those old songs
don't fence me in....

with optional hammered dulcimer backed by a bamboo khan
playing a harmonica's role,

leaving the acuated harmonic notes to Mr. Franklin's
glass harmonica with its eerie swirling tones...

ap apro apoptosis gnosis sneeze vir vir gin al vita-uosity if ity boo.

pop pop pop. ding.
Not sorry for the ramble, it has become my steady state. I wish I had known this man.

No nonsense makes sense.
Matthew Feb 2019
The stories of girls getting a prince to sweep them off their feet
was all I needed to search for him
asking the boys if
they were my one and only
Until, one day I got a yes
, but he wasn't the one
And as the years went by I gave up hope
Until, the princess walked up to me
her frilly golden curls
and sea blue eyes
sang songs of true love
she swiped the floor from under me
and came in for a kiss.
Now joined by the heart
After the royal wedding.

— The End —