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Man Mar 8
I ask you, what is math?
What are equations?
Factored life.
I charge it is living,
Senseless pained observations which we must make
So as to live another day, so as not to perish early
And die before a just time;
The degrees of life are right.
Man must stand *****, stiffen your spine,
But remain relaxed.
Straighten out your ethics, your morals;
Never forget from where you came.
Your ancestors, this planet.
That you are just in another herd.
No really different than any other animal,
Only in our intelligence.
Which is itself, a gift.
So give thanks to mother nature.
She could use it
Carlo C Gomez Feb 28
~
Dead channel skies
Segregation in the flat fields
A hole in the silver lining
Where the fence is low

~
They fell from the moon last night
Caught in a strange
Chapter of fear
The land is inhospitable
And so are we
Wipe them from your mind
We must preserve what is left

~
silence
sweet silence
like none other
despite the library door
slamming everytime
someone leaves or arrives

it seems to slam louder
when they leave

i am not perturbed
or distracted, nor am i
expecting not to be

here, alone, surrounded by books,
i just am

lamenting this place not being
as busy
as it should be
who’s fault is that?

celebrating this place not being
as busy
as it should be
guilty as charged

all these faces i see
it’s like a small town here
sometimes abandoned
sometimes inhabited

once again,
i don’t care

how can i?
my head, full of
Aurelius and Bukowski
doesn’t have space to

well, deep down,
i guess i do care
but not as much as
i suppose society begs i
should

how can i?
i’m too busy figuring out
who i truly am
and the books help, Bukowski
was correct, these philosophers are
like brothers to me and i speculate
my deep “connection” to them
to men whom i never met
yet felt more fatherly care from
than my own

maybe that’s the root

sometimes, all this reading begs the question

do i like books
more than people?
or people more
than books?

i think i know the answer,
eureka!

i love books, and individuals alike
i don’t like people
especially when they group up
in congregations and crowds,
strangers in a
can of sardines
with no space to possibly
ever care

only to survive and barely breathe
or to escape such a reality

how could i?
when they don’t
even care for themselves

it’s disheartening, really
to witness such potential
in one soul
and watch it *******
melt away
around his or her friends

around their families’
incessant influence and needs
abusing providers

consumed by their personal troubles and struggles
and vices, infected by the amplification of
a hang out
girls night
boys night
the clubs, the bars
the gossips of nonsense and ****
that simply isn’t their business

sewage

their obvious and yet
radiantly painful,
like a sunburn that isn’t on you
but hurts to look at on someone else,
avoidance of themselves
begging the following:

could these souls spend
an hour, alone, with a book
and paper and pencil?

how could they?

they’d like to, i’m sure,

but hate themselves just enough
to not be able to.

-melancholicreator
i dont know, i was in a mood

enjoy.
Zywa Feb 22
The underwater

***** takes a breath, gurgles --


and splutters out tones.
Composition "2me Sonate" for ***** (1983, Jean-Pierre Leguay), performed by Jean-Luc Etienne in the Organpark on February 18th, 2024

Collection "org anp ark" #374
Anais Vionet Jan 30
When a class is boring, the air can feel close and rebreathed - not a comfortable feeling for a COVID child. When the class is finally over, it’s like you’ve escaped something.

Did you know an hour has 60 minutes because ancient Babylonians used a seximal system? (base six).

The class I was in was small, just eight of us around a table in a small room (four students were missing that day) and somehow the class had wandered into the unstable, waring, state of the world.

The professor ended his unscheduled thought, on the result of nuclear war, by saying, “After the nuclear exchanges, when cockroaches take over..”

“No,” I interrupted - it was a flashbulb moment - an impulse. I don’t usually interrupt professors, “Ants. Ants would take over - they’re mobile super-organisms, cockroaches are just meat to them.”

His smile and nod of approval felt warm and cozy, as if my emotions had a texture and temperature - but I knew it was something assigned to me briefly, like a motel room.

Nuclear survival isn’t exactly my bailiwick, I’m not sure where I picked that thought up or why I had the confidence to offer it. Confidence is a thin lever to work with when talking to a professor. I’ve seen professors crush brash students.

The bell rang, I had survived, and Leong was waiting for me in the hall. The crowd in the hall was moving on toward their classes, like water splashing in every direction. Leong barked a laugh. “What?” I asked.

“Neh,” she said, waving her hand (meaning forget it).
“What?” I asked again.
“When I was little, I would visit my grandparents' farm, in Shandong (province, China). They would call their cows in with a bell,” she said, motioning, with both hands to include the crowded hall.
“We’re the most privileged cows in the universe,” she suggested smilingly.
“I suppose we are,” I agreed, as we passed out into a wind as cold and harsh as witches' breath.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Bailiwick: “a sphere in which someone has expertise.”
jack Jan 25
picture this: you’re a child and nations are tumbling down around you like dominoes.

your mother tells you it will be okay because your nation is like no other and you think: she’s either naïve, or she’s lying.

(it’s probably the former because she’s much happier than you and you’re a child who has yet to see enough shades of blue.)

this is why she’s wrong:
you’re a child and you don’t learn about the world wars of the twentieth century because you live in a city that predates any and all gods; in the cradle of civilisation, and your history textbooks are full of summarised stories about hundreds of kingdoms that have risen and fallen right here, beneath your feet.

and that is why you’re not naïve:
who is to say that your nation is like no other when the city you live in is still an enigma, built on the ruins of seven cities that shared her name, like the same phoenix burning over and over and rising again and again, in a constant state of death and rebirth? humanity is ephemeral, so its cradle and its deathbed might as well be one and the same.

nations are tumbling down around you like dominoes. they call it spring and you know it’s coming for you, and it arrives before winter dies. it’s the shortest winter you live.




now picture this: you’re a child. flashbacks. nightmares. the name of god can trigger a panic attack.

you skip fridays at school until schools decide to make fridays and sundays weekends, and saturdays are school days stuck in the middle.

(you’re always stuck in the middle. you haven’t seen enough shades of blue but you know it’s better than all the grey.)

(every time a dog barks, you know shells will fall, and every time a bomb goes off, you know the pressure will reach you before the sound, and every explosion is followed immediately by another so the ones who rush in to help are the ones who will die next. you’re just a child, though, and you’ll always be stuck at home, being grey.)

your mother is naïve until she starts listening to you —

she’s upset you spend too much time online because she doesn’t want you to escape but only in your head.

“live with us,” she says, and you know she wants you to stay because there’s a list of names of those who left. (you envy them because your humanity is ephemeral and they’re now immortal, unlike this city and every heartbeat within its walls.)








finally, picture this: picture the loneliness of invisibility and the ache of exhaustion in your lung after you scream for hours. no one sees, and no one hears. no one cares. and sometimes, you’re too tired to care too. can you blame yourself? you’re a child. you’re a child and nations are tumbling around you like dominoes and all you can think is let the whole world burn down. sometimes you’re as naïve as your mother and all you can think is we will rise again. we always do.

picture this: you’re a child. no one cares because people like you are just meant to suffer. only people like you. the world isn’t fair. they will remember you, though, as collateral damage, and they will honour your fleeting presence on this earth by writing movies about the horrible few months their soldiers have spent in your lifeless desert before coming home with flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks triggered by the name of a god they’ll never meet, and wrinkles you don’t know if you’ll live long enough to have.

(it’s okay, you convince yourself.
you want immortality, and sometimes this means you have to die young.
deep down, you know it means you just don’t want to die at all.
and what do you know of death, anyway? you’re just a child and you can’t tell apart grey from blue.)
Carlo C Gomez Jan 16
~
Waiting for the reassemblage
One light will do
Bright things come to confusion

What pushed us together?
The love underneath conflict's thumb?
Winter kept us warm
Her face soft as sleep

With wakened eyes
With wakened hands
You quiet me
On these nightingale floors
In small explosions
that are yours to keep

I can’t remember how
we made love, but I remember
the colors we made together

It is in the shelter
Of each other that we live

~
George Krokos Nov 2023
Shame on that country as future history will show
what it had done to the world as it began to grow;
ignoring those standards of international laws
going about its own business unmindful of flaws.

Many of the other countries it shared borders with
had complaints to make against it that were in a pith;
related to its intentions towards them that seemed
to be hostile beyond those they apparently deemed.

The global community began to be alarmed
when that country's military build-up was armed
and ready to take on any other State around
that so tried to restrict it from gaining further ground.

Regarding itself as having gained the upper hand
in the area around most of the sea and land;
ready to defend its own interests and portion
by building fortifications as a precaution.

Together with a pandemic started on its shores
and allowed to spread abroad before closing its doors
hesitating to inform the world of the virus
that was going to infect people and to harm thus.

Done for economic and strategic advantage
as the virus has spread all over the worldly stage
pushing most countries into a recession these days
being reminiscent of old times the past displays.

It seems that the ball started rolling at the end of
a trade war between it and the U.S.A. to shove
that country and any other out of the way and
to show it also really had Trump's winning card hand.

One of its main objectives was to just gain Taiwan
an island country near its shores as part of its plan
having similar ethnicity but different
in political ideology it was bent.

The tables have been turning against it for a while
as the world now looks on at the extent of its guile
for those countries that've been affected will decide
what actions to take in curbing this rogue nation's stride.

A worst case scenario would be another war
if too many thresholds for either side slam a door
into each one of their faces as they'll test the throng
and spy on what the other's doing in case it's wrong.

In order to avoid such a dire confrontation
both sides must employ high level communication
in the field of diplomacy where it's most concerned
to resolve all those issues so the world won't be burned.

The situation above may remind us about
those preceding years of the second world war to flout
that mankind doesn't need to go down this road again
unless our life and survival on earth we disdain.
________
Written in Oct'21.
There shouldn't be any doubt about which country is being referred to here.
A similar correlation can be said about Russia together with the outbreak of war instigated between it and the Ukraine. The war between Israel and Hamas is different but still exhibits extreme rogue like behavior by Hamas in provoking the conflict. Other nations that may fit the description of the title of this poem are North Korea, Iran and Iraq, perhaps others as well.
George Krokos Nov 2023
To survive one must
observe discipline in life
regardless of wealth
____
This is a Senryu as it deals with human nature. I've got all my Haiku's and Senryu's together written one after another and may have to go back and rename or re-title what I've already posted like this one above.
Jeremy Betts Feb 2018
It's a miracle that when I hit the proverbial wall I didn't split my skull right up the middle and spill it all
Not able to gain full control, a factual portrayal of self betrayal as usual
Once beautiful, evidence of it not admissible, miserable and hypocritical
A little dysfunctional don't ya know
All the scars that don't show are what slow the normal flow
Out of my mind cause its inhabitable, so I turn to a radical but experimental cure that'll baffle the medical field because its all hypothetical
What if I didn't hear my call to greatness or maybe I just dropped the ball
I could make a voodoo doll and place him at the finish line so I could win after all

Instead...

My fall hit terminal velocity before I stained the city streets and still survived impossibly
Low visibility so there's no way to see what's right here in front of me
All the money in the world couldn't put humpty dumpty or me together again indefinitely
They just don't have the technology to put me back the way I otta be
There's a high probability that I live in a realm of impossibly
To actually believe that I could ever be a normal man in this society is lunacy
But do I even want to be a part of this idiocracy? I mean really
But it's easy to get lost at sea, holding on so desperately to a buoy as the waves that represent the calamity of life pummel me savagely
No key to the shackles that bind me
I'll be lucky if luck ever finds me
Try not to give a **** but life always reminds me
So I gouge out my eyes to permanently not see

Now...

It's only darkness as I regress to a familiar residence
A yellow envelope taped to the door, no more light access, only dark witnessed at this address
Under constant duress from the excess stress and an abundance of B.S.
The absences of a conscience is the best plan to make it easier but I must confess
That this chess game is at a stale mate, zero progress
I don't even know what progress feels like, seems like I only digress
But I still obsess over a success that will never be reached due to being far to careless
Nevertheless, I continue the process even though I don't possess any finesse
Like a bull in a China shop, I make a mess of everything with nothing but my presence
So in essence you could make a case that my existence here, by every measure, pointless
And you might be right, at the very least it's a good guess

©2018
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