#assonance
Sometimes I snap back to reality
Smell my burning hopes killing me
And I cry when my eyes kiss the smoke
Of dreams and connections and plans I wrote
Suffocating in the fire I stroke
But death is warm and my fear is cold
I'm stuck, sinking into coals alone
Turning fifteen and
I miss my past
A wish won't last
I must keep on
Going running
I must accept
Your expectations
I have no passion
I have no mission
I take no action
Must I go on?
If uphill ends
Then maybe I’ll reach
The top no downs
A high I can keep
I don’t want to fall
I dont want to fade
I’ll give it my all
I’ll never fall
I’ll give it my all
Courage will call
I'll give it my all
I’ll give it…
It’s useless
My body fades and decays
Afraid, inside, anxious
I Stay
I wait and wait
I ask Self-hate to
Let me go
Away
This elastic band it’s my comfort zone
Snaps back around my throat
Let me go
Nov 3, 2024
Nov 3, 2024 at 9:26 AM UTC
On this one bit I will not yield:
When on a modern battlefield
Where not one thought can be concealed
As hidden things can be revealed
You Shouldn't Wield a Wooden Shield
Mar 3, 2021
Mar 3, 2021 at 11:38 PM UTC
When on a modern battlefield,
You shouldn't wield a wooden shield.
Mar 4, 2021
Mar 4, 2021 at 9:08 AM UTC
Snowflakes hum inside my head,
bumping to and fro.
Stinging sky meets soggy ground and nothing seems to stick.
Each flake is different, so I'm told--
each unknowable and cold, they vanish when you try to grasp them--
fleeting, fragile wisps.
I've spun no story strong enough
to stake my ship upon.
My tears dry up before they're spilled for little lasts for long.
Blankets white I find here not--
that, nor green-clad earth--
only harried solitude inside these biting mists.
Perhaps my blust'ring mind is not
leading me to tread my sought-for courses; I fear I've forgot them
yearning for the drifts.
But elsewhere 'neath the firmament, there are other skies.
There are other thoughts in other hearts apart from mine.
From over where the snow falls
and beneath the bedrock's roots
flames unflinching flicker still through height and depth and width.
Mar 1, 2021
Mar 1, 2021 at 12:25 PM UTC
—
neglect and respect do not rhyme,
**{will grant you one,
will give you none.
will demand one,
will send you some.
you poets,
always thinking
you can get away
with murdering
the English language.
***** of assonance,
you do not fool me,
I’ve killed a thousand
men’s “original”rhymes,
while you’ve been
fast sleeping,
they’ve been
fast seeping.
I’ll give you no quarter,
won’t spare a lousy dime,
my spare change,
is poet-unaffordable,
cheap suited hucksters.
work and ****
do rhyme.
you can be one,
if you do not
put in some.
work by day,
slave by night.
awake to the sun’s
inquiry, what have
you done for me
lately?
IF
all you have to show is this
scribbilus miscellaneous,
tear up your lice-ence,
poetic and DMV, you
ain’t going nowhere.
was branded by hot iron,
early on,
brandy channing.
your best nightmare,
guidance counselor,
extraordinaire,
great big fairie,
poseur, exposer,
m u r d e r e r
of awful poetry}**
WHAT,
what do you stand for?
Jun 26, 2020
Jun 26, 2020 at 3:34 PM UTC
When a good thing comes your way
Your foes will turn to watch the rain
Apr 13, 2020
Apr 13, 2020 at 2:51 AM UTC
“Will you barter for your garden?”
the familiar stranger taunted.
His haunting talk caught on a loose thread in my heart,
recalling time and battles fought.
Make no mistake about the fae.
I must admit I was afraid, for I have seen my adversary
tear out the grass’s screaming hair,
poison the soil with atmosphere arid,
strip the baby branches barren,
shave the landscape clear.
I need not obey him.
I have in my hands a *****
and around this place an angry hedge.
He can not prevail unless I show him the way.
“No,” say I,
“No bartering in my garden today.”
Feb 17, 2020
Feb 17, 2020 at 8:53 PM UTC
Death is not how you think she is
or how I think she is.
She is silently staring
from a dark corner
in a shady alley.
She is tall, slim,
like a skyscraper.
She has dark, long hair,
that falls to the earth and covers it, like curtains.
(It blinds us.)
She is beautiful when seen from afar.
She waits for you,
patiently,
on that old motel bed with spread arms (and legs).
Her eyes are deep,
mirror-like.
They show you what it could be.
And her lips whisper empty promises (falacies).
Death smiles at you.
(she likes to smile)
You can see her yellow,
splintered teeth,
that reek of coffee and cigarettes.
From her mansion, she laughs,
throws *****
Spreads pests,
while drinking wine she collected
as you cut your wrists with expertise.
It falls like a stream of crimson
inside her cup.
What a delight!
You give her that alcohol (addictive).
Death cries when she loses
does not go to funerals.
Jumps the rope with a bag of bones.
And sometimes comes
as soon as you call.
Deep down, she is very lonely.
Wishes for love.
Wishes for you to love her.
You wish to love her too.
(It is easier than loving yourself)
Dec 8, 2019
Dec 8, 2019 at 5:57 PM UTC
What's your name?
You're a so so-so so-and-so.
For reasons you say you don't know,
you'd always find me feeling so low.
Is it you? Or my love for you?
In the morning, I'm mourning.
Wondering if something
would change.
My sorrow's soaring,
hovering till the end;
my doom.
Won't you you save me
from this gloom?
My heart has no room
for it but you.
Is it you or my love for you?
May 29, 2019
May 29, 2019 at 5:49 PM UTC
Standing on the shoreline of a smooth unmoving pond
Stars mirrored in deep silver, serenely desolate
Venus cupped exactly in the waxing crescent’s core
The water, black and soundless, boundless, starkly infinite
Inseparable, we watched entranced. Together on the shore.
We stepped into the cool smooth water, calmly, hand in hand
Effortlessly sliding in the soundless silver pond
And underneath that water, silent, absolutely still
Our desires were extinguished. Our aching hearts erased
In the utter quiet comfort of the water's cool embrace
... This I do remember. The rest, you know by heart
How this ever spinning world will in due time, illuminate
What the dark had hidden. The white hot stone within
The deepest core of dreaming. And all our days defined
By desire. Our hearts clamour. But we're never satisfied.
And I wonder, does it matter, in the gritty dragging days
Boredom laced from time to time by yearning, sharp and hot
Does it matter to distinguish what's illusion and what's not?
If I can summon back a single flash of that dark water
Why not **** time in trying? I'd rather love than not.
And you, of course. Unshocking, that swift flicker of surprise
The striking disappointment as precisely, midnight chimes.
And the masks are lifted. So I ask you, what’s the difference
If I’m entranced by man or mask? Illusion or existance?
Wherever pleasure’s sought is for the seeker to decide.
When my heart’s unquiet, loud with longing and desire,
Defiantly I seek you. Not vanquished, not quite yet
Tick by tick receding. But I insist on keeping this:
Inseparate underwater, serenely intertwined
A distant hint of feeling. Thus is my keen heart satisfied.
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019 at 3:11 PM UTC
it feels pretty strange
being called by a phrase
that isn't my name
Nov 3, 2018
Nov 3, 2018 at 6:03 AM UTC
My mind is a prison.
I can read the sign, but it wasn't mentioned in the manual.
Just sigh and move on.
Nov 3, 2018
Nov 3, 2018 at 4:59 AM UTC
Alliteration and assonance
Are what we need to make words dance.
Pretty poetic practices percolate the page,
As apples happily meet our approval and appreciation.
Words have music
As surely as the sun
Gives light.
And all these things
Are older than the hills.
Paul Butters
Oct 10, 2017
Oct 10, 2017 at 6:40 AM UTC
My knuckles look like coke and roses
The winter bit them hard; they cracked
I **** on them; they bleed their noses
I fear they are forever chapped
My knuckles look like milk and lipstick
Dressed in cream and Vaseline
I'm oiled up so says the dipstick
With pink supreme silk gasoline
My knuckles look like wine and diamonds
I deck them out most everyday
They never mind the crime and violence
I keep them moist with Tanqueray
My knuckles look like snow and crowbar
They finally just had enough
I tried to run; I didn't go far
My knuckles, unlike me, are rough
Aug 25, 2017
Aug 25, 2017 at 11:36 AM UTC
Whispering eternally into the void
Hoping internally
It can turn the black
churning bile of thoughts
into incandescent showers,
specific epiphany.
Lately, I've been laden
with the epitome of anomaly.
Loner labotomy,
living in self devised autonomy
A private economy of thoughts,
exchanging deranged for sane
Only to flip back again
Turn around, full swing
Indignant incantations ring,
Echoing down the corridors
This skeletal paradigm
Of rusted pipes
I've unwittingly installed
above once placid pools,
A wellspring for many muses.
Caught in a rift of dimension
Words begin to leak
Without direct intention
And with little attention for the details
My thoughts quickly become words
That derail more than just a conversation.
My hesitation to engage
Is a fair wage for holding my silence
Tightly,
But the precarious musings of my mind
Must tumble out to spite me.
I tried cutting out my tongue to save face
But a poet who can't speak is a disgrace.
1.8.2017
C.e.M.
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 12:48 AM UTC
You are the moon that is moored in the sky
And the moonshine that shimmers against Atlantis' cloak
So vivid, yet so pale
And I begin to wonder if you're alright
Up there, all alone atop the world.
Is it better to be carefully propped on a celestial pedestal for all men to indulge,
Or to be chaotically plunged
Into a sea of solitude and peace?
You are much wiser and older, my dear;
Is it true that
Beauty lies
In the eye
Of the beholder?
Sep 10, 2016
Sep 10, 2016 at 7:04 PM UTC
Strawberry sun
hot on swaying hips
a shimmer of skin,
sultry beacon of temptation.
Days smear in sweat
and grass stains.
Twilight carries dusty toes
a few steps further.
Legs dangling, lonely
top of rusted tower,
Moon whispering
“come and kiss me”.
Languid laughter lilts
lining ancient constellations
Space(s) [is] filled
By our separation.
Cicadas croon,
Biding elusive slumber,
dawn’s yellow tendrils grasp eyelashes,
rays morph into rivers of light.
Time, the illusion of a tether;
A notion of perpetual motion
Adrift an absent-minded sea,
Hazy, evasive sleep
Our ropes will fray
in wisps and waves of heat.
C.e.M.
31082016
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 8:05 PM UTC
Assonance was ensconced in my bonce once.
It puts me in the mood for a muse.
Love those cool peaceful pools under a Moon in June.
Or to croon about dunes and oasis blooms.
Such a lovely tune,
It’ll make you swoon.
Enjoy my runes,
No matter how crude.
I can be a goon
Or even a loon.
Sometimes a fool.
Poems strewn with clichés
For want of a better phrase.
Words hewn before noon,
To give you a boon.
Bad days may loom,
Injustices done.
Cruelty that’s is fuel for a duel and may ruin a life.
We may be doomed.
But I must stay upbeat,
Give you a treat
And make you fall at my feet.
Quite a feat!
Every dog has his day,
Another cliché you’ll say.
But I don’t get any pay,
So soon be on my way.
Love to play with words,
Writing songs for the birds.
These words are a tool
For making me cool.
We’re back to those pools:
They are shimmering jewels.
Paul Butters
Aug 28, 2016
Aug 28, 2016 at 9:36 AM UTC
Salty tears
Slither like snakes in summer
Meandering moments of madness mused
Ratchet heart and rabid tongue retorts
Flimflam fluke fisticuffs fought
A mirrored mirage manically manifest
A parade of psychosis fevered pitch
Easy the embryo erased eternal
Gods grace given gone
Sanguine souls stand sequestered
A pitiful penitent they plead
A song of Solomon heralds
Cherubs on chariots
Carrying chalices crafted of gold
Seeks repentance refrained from sin
All souls suffer life myriad interpretations
And all
Must answer
In
The
End
Aug 2, 2016
Aug 2, 2016 at 10:21 AM UTC
In the midst of my wakening,
what is this quintessence of ash
that haunts my soul?
What is sanity,
which quivers not need before your eyes,
whether you do not exist in reality,
only fiction in my assonance.
What wonder is the reasoning of man,
how simple in splendour. The clarity
of wakefulness which I perceive to be
sanity is only the same clarity with
which I dream or breathe, only the same
clarity which madmen believe to be reality.
If deception and error are my clarity
then nothing is my reality, for all lie
to protect themselves from the nightmare of old,
His power not enough to protect your mind
from the evil inside of your bones, the fire inside
of your soul. Which likens to the hellfire I find
in the dampening nights of relentless cries;
the corruption of your mind is clarity - a
clarity in your twisted reality.
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 3:59 PM UTC
Is it indubitably unsuitable
to be suitably incommunicable
on the undeducible deduction
dubitably deduced
to be immovably unmovable
or doably undoable?
Or can a crazy conundrum communicate
the incommunicable indubitabilty
of the undeducibly suitable deduction?
Simply said,
such is doably suitable,
or indubitably deducible
if the doably communicable deduction
deduces down
to the suitably suitable,
Movably reducible reduction
that's indubitably doable.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 8:29 AM UTC
Wondrous whirling worlds of words
Wander away.
Smooth musical tunes from the Muses melt my mind
And make my heart go boom.
Sunny sylvan scenes ****** my soul.
In a simmering silence
Broken only
By birdsong.
It starts with simple wordplay,
Toying with those letters
Until some magic kicks in.
Visions of versified viewscapes
Mess with my head.
Eureka moments marching across the mountains
Of my brain like screaming Banshees.
So thus a poem is born
From seemingly idle play.
Those words are worked again
And posted here
To brighten the reader’s day.
Paul Butters
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 6:08 AM UTC