Who needs words
When you can simply go ???
Or !!!
!!!
This poem will not make me any £££
Or even $$$
But I don’t give a *.
I just love writing 100%
& don’t * a d
About £££££.

I <3 to experiment with poetry and language,
Stretching those *aries.
*** let’s have a good LOL
And even ROFL.
Let’s play the %s
And send my spell-check
Into a red frenzy.

Any ???s ?
You !!!s at this ???
And I’ve only scratched the ~~~~~
There may be ####, #### more to come.
I <3 my Qwerty keyboard
With it’s !”£$%^&()_+ at the top.
The more I look the more I see.
@ last I’m free
From the Grammar ****.
=ly free from the tyranny of the word.

But worry not my lovely words
For I will always go <<<< to you
In spite of looking >>>>>>>
At all times.
The **.

Paul Butters

© PB 28\7\2018.

Well, there had been a tree
All soft gray trunk,
Crawling with snails after the rain,
And carved with symbols of naïve love.
You couldn’t climb the branches to the sky,
But they could cradle you as you watched the world go by.

When I was younger
The red and blue lights
Would remind me I'm safe

The same red and blue lights
Have turned me into a shadow
I no longer have the strength
No longer have the will to go on

Red and blue
Was the colour of the sky
The night they took away my best friend
Red and blue
Once more lit up the night
When they came to take away my second chance

They were meant to be a saving grace
A symbol for life and protection
But what's the point

They no longer protect me from the real threat
The real offenders that walk the street
The red and blue
The sirens
All they do is take from me what I love

What kind of fool am I?
One that shows no motion
Even though he thinks himself alone

What kind of fool is that?
A soul searching blind man
Who converts sight of facts to fiction

What does he perceive then?
He sees something in nothing
As a fanatical zealot would

What does he believe in?
Nothing, but he still looks
Remnants of God are still with him

Well then he is crazy, insane, a madman even
To search for something he knows isn't there

Yes,
He is only human

You cannot understand.
You see
what is,
and only know
what was,
in fragments
gleaned
from pilfered tombs.
Like shredded tomes,
whole,
but unintelligible.
What is it
you think you know?
Who do you see
when you review
the logs and docs?
Who
do you think you hear
muttering through
your dust caked speakers?
An angel
touched vessel?
Cracked
but not yet discarded?
Useful
despite its flaws.
Can you feel
the strain?
Can you taste
the stain?
Is it really precious,
or is it as false
as the piles of transcripts
dog-eared
and finger-smudged?
The prophesies
that have all fallen through.
Like the blue eyes
I was Promised.
The water,
a cliche.
A voice,
spoken to a child
in a bright
and steam-filled bathroom.
What is it you want
to discover
to uncover
to recover
from the pit
of past moments
and what makes you think
that any of it belongs to you?

(Warning: this poem is not for the religiously inclined.)

For centuries, entrepreneurs
Have been selling slivers
Of the True Cross of Jesus
Promising how much it delivers.
Of course, if they were any part
Of the real True Cross at all
The weight of all that wood means
The cross was thirty feet tall.

Still, it is only meant to be
A symbol of The Son Of God
Who got murdered and transformed
Into a deity, but that's odd.
It’s like all the Romans making
A ****** dagger their sign
Of the purity of Julius Caesar;
Revered if not quite divine.

Or maybe worshipping the bullet
That killed Kennedy or King.
Are we sure that kind of devotion
Is the right way to the right thing?
But fonts full of holy water did
The trick for many centuries.
So, maybe the faithful don’t care
About ecumenical vagaries.

Yet I don’t hold much hope out
For businesses of spirituality
Who put up golden castles
In zones of the most abject poverty.
Anyone who thinks a god
Needs to look down on glitz
Promises not much more
Than a dogma from the pits.

We need to celebrate what we have
And not so much what is lost.
What has all the jewels and gold
And superstition added to the cost?
I prefer to keep my integrity and
Check out who’s the real boss.
Knowing that it might upset those
Who get weepy about a cross.

One: Smokey grey; the kind that blurs your vision or gathers in corners of ceilings that are somehow still not as high as you.
Two: The teal that masked the bedroom walls of my old home; the bedroom with nothing but a mattress on the floor and my unplugged television. I was eco-friendly, which leads me to
Three: Green: any and all greens. Mother Nature makes it obvious she loves its hues, and I strive to be one with this Earth.
Four: Whether fueled by anger or love, give me rose-colored shades and I'll rock 'em with grace and style like none before. My red blood boils with passion.
Five: Making concrete decisions is not my forte, so choosing a final favorite will leave me second guessing. Combine all the options and give me a rainbow, because when we see a color, it is actually that color being reflected while all the other colors are absorbed. They work together, as we should. You bring the crayons and I'll bring the blank canvas, let's paint the world rainbow together.