#brutal
dogged-king,
of marble and stone
dogged king,
of marrow and bone
stomach,
swollen
with sour words
Dec 17, 2025
Dec 17, 2025 at 1:26 PM UTC
I will make
tiny bets
on brown sugared eyes
and a lightly lifted chest
We will make
one tiny bet
on a month with no name
and a boy,
with no head
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 3:30 PM UTC
the last button on my shirt
just wont let go
twist and tear
and still it holds
the last button on my shirt?
tough as bone.
splinter and shear
and still it holds
the last button on my shirt
a crimson flow
a pupil of thread
watching home
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 12:09 PM UTC
I have pasta trauma
That’s the joke I tell
But it isn’t funny
It’s shorthand for the sickness
That never leaves
It’s why hunger feels safer than indulgence
Why I can starve myself with ease
But stumble over a plate of something rich
I am fluent in the language of deprivation
Fullness has always felt like arrogance
Nobody talks about the way shame
Ferments in the stomach
How it sits heavier than food ever could
Shame teaches you to apologize for existing
Before you even open your mouth
Shame teaches you to rehearse obedience
Until it becomes instinct
Hunger became my first addiction
The only sensation I could control
I didn’t know then that choosing not to eat
Was the closest thing to rebellion I had
Sep 2, 2025
Sep 2, 2025 at 10:09 AM UTC
They call them the Kings of Bones,
torching the villages and the homes.
Saying they’re done with the ******* and moans
they’re expected to hear when upon their thrones.
So tell me is a battlefield even real
if it isn’t littered in blood, limbs and steel?
The bone kings only receive their end of the deal
if they offer up those who support them for the next meal.
So with scraped and ****** knees,
how are they to pray or please?
If our heads are always bent,
does worship even hold any sentiment?
So tell me is it really a done deal,
just like in guns, germs and steel?
The bone kings take what they want, act as they feel.
They tear all apart and neglect to place a seal.
They’re all too busy reading out of date scripture
that they’re all missing the blatantly clear picture;
Hell is empty as the devils walk the earth.
Everyone wants to rule the world,
trade gold for diamond and diamond for pearl;
doesn’t realize the reverse of worth.
Now they’re wearing collarbones around their neck,
and accessorizing every vertebrae as a ring.
Assuming this cruelty grants them respect,
really at best it’s just straight vulgarity.
But each King stands alone,
forever isolated and on their own.
So they polish a fresh bone
just to add to their skeletal throne.
Jul 16, 2025
Jul 16, 2025 at 11:39 AM UTC
I've had you on a pedestal,
I've had you look at me so tall;
Must've been so brutal,
When you felt the fall.
Was it unfair?
Or did I misinterpret your glare?
My apologies for the stare;
Must've been a justice flare.
Oct 15, 2024
Oct 15, 2024 at 4:08 PM UTC
Speak of the devil and see who appears in the mirrors
Who knows better than you all your fears and what brings you to tears?
The voice that escapes through clenched teeth, grinding like gears
Is exactly the same as the voice saying the things nobody hears
Most all of the verbal abuse does not funnel in through the ears
It stays internal, verbal and mental commingle to create brutal elixirs
Constructing, seemingly out of nothing, life altering barriers
A senseless mugging in broad daylight and no one interferes
Just like no one hears my prayers
The real me almost disappears from years of hiding behind makeshift veneers
Hanging on by a meer thread, I think the puppeteers have switched careers
©2024
Jan 3, 2024
Jan 3, 2024 at 3:31 PM UTC
I've always been the kid in the hall
Outside the office door of some metaphorical "principal"
Donning a dunce cap, back to the wall
Anticipation spikes in general
This time it's special
When waiting for the next hypothetical, often hypocritical, shoe to fall I make it a double
Dribble and drop the ball
Taking on the challenge of life was a bad call
The order's too tall, don't try it y'all
What I've been given to work with is abysmal
Can't rely on it being factual at all
A criminally out of date owners manual
A For Dummies series appealing to a low level criminal
Vaguely creating, and/or aiding, this failure ritual
Oh the unmitigated gall
Scheduling my burial service to take place before the funeral
Fuucking brutal
I hate it and it seems the feelings mutual
The line stepping is habitual
The backward motion is perpetual
Not sure any of this is avoidable
But, what do I know...
...everything and nothing is impossibly possible
©2023
Dec 20, 2023
Dec 20, 2023 at 3:00 PM UTC
no matter what form
of pain
comes into your life
pain is always raw
and brutal
Mar 4, 2023
Mar 4, 2023 at 6:48 PM UTC
silence can be...awkward.
but it can also be a powerful tool.
depending on your intention, it can represent respect.
repentance.
introspection.
it can help you grieve.
it can make it easier to breathe.
and in a world that can bring the brutality of war
into the safety of your home,
when you feel lost for words,
like there's nothing you can say,
the sound of silence can say it all
Mar 17, 2022
Mar 17, 2022 at 2:15 PM UTC
how many protests have you watched now?
how many devolving into riots?
via violent actors, on either side
what was gained, for those we lost?
was it in vain?
did the pay outweigh the cost?
or was our venture defunct?
would civil disobedience had been better sought?
or a more brutal insurrection,
to rival those we've been taught?
just do like they'd wish
and lay down and die
Mar 12, 2021
Mar 12, 2021 at 10:48 PM UTC
why blame the devil
for the actions that were made
in the name of your creator
listening to your scriptures and parables
has only lead me astray
only those who cause harm
cause harm for those who don’t
lock away your worries
ascension is near
Oct 21, 2020
Oct 21, 2020 at 9:05 PM UTC
She has that
reptilian heart, snake eyes-
cat screeching, rabid anger.
Whenever she's close to
me, I need sedation;
another world-one with
beauty and love.
Hers is a land of
brutality and hatred.
It makes my
soul *****
When I'm lucky enough to
escape, she finds me, and
lures me back with her
charms and spells.
Then, it's back to the
cage, waiting to be
consumed.
She quit doing drugs.
Her dope now is
control.
It's the dragon that
she rides to hell.
May 8, 2020
May 8, 2020 at 5:49 PM UTC
Don't sing
don't shout
don't try to get out.
It's nice and warm in here,
and smells like a slave,
and the grave will come
soon, so try to be brave.
And when you're gone and
rotting, and sunk in the
ground, I'll find a new
little bird that won't
make a sound.
Don't walk, don't run
don't swim towards the sun.
Embrace the darkness, you'll
have lots of fun.
I have my gun, it's loaded
and cocked.
Make a wrong move, and
you're bound to get rocked.
Don't be sick, don't get well.
Don't smell heaven, or skip
towards hell.
Don't feel
don't think
don't talk
don't drink
don't smoke
don't move
don't live
don't die
don't try,
you'll fail
don't breathe
don't cough, don't sneeze
don't wake up early, or
arrive too late--don't love,
don't hate.
Don't express emotions that
seem insane.
I made my safe little
world, and I like it this time,
and you're frayed on
the edges, and too prone to fly.
So come closer
my little bird and get in the cage.
I'll clip your wings with my
apathy and rage.
Don't look at the moon,
or touch the stars.
Don't play in the fields
or go near the bars
it's not safe there,
so just be afraid.
I like to play tricks
you'll be my knave,
my jack of hearts
my ace of spades;
and we'll pillage and plunder,
and live off the land,
and you'll lie here quietly
in my rotten ******* hand.
Don't quit, don't try,
just sit here
and die
and lie naked in my
mansion of filth,
my consuming wealth
my towering health,
cuz I'm full of stealth and stature
and beauty and grace,
and I'll smear it all over
your ******* little face.
Apr 10, 2020
Apr 10, 2020 at 7:46 PM UTC
~for Lori Jones McCaffery~
Lori Jones McCaffery commenting on
“a new time (poetry in the time of pandemic)”*^
“Tender and brutal at the same time. Like the times.”
<>
your observation, a commission, opens an incision,
bleeding out a Noah flood vision:
<>
when we begin, to compare and contrast the movable tender and the unstoppable brutal, the poetry must rise to equalize the pressure of unbalanced times, the tender, and the brutal in an uneasy peaceful coexistence, at the same time, same place
The Brutal The Tender
————— —————
life in the epicenter, the greatest, in the darkened bedroom,
noisiest city, now landscape she awakens, her hand quick
painting quiet, comes to rest on my chest,
one lives/writes/eyesights thru the quality of motion+volume
pink mask + a minimum six of heartbeats, is it loud enough,
feet of separation, steady on, no need to dial 911!
a citified tableau of macro wave she unaware that I can hear
forces in crashing collision, upon her loud, tender exhalation
your skin’s cells celebrating surviving day#?
newspaper images of Death’s many volunteer, food delivery,
ministers applauding the newly though I am asymptomatic
arrived mobile morgues, for 100 my request tenderly, firmly
died yesterday, denied, for I meet too many
their brutal death rattles of the vulnerable criteria,
overwhelmed the super-surround. instead, offering food to me,
sound silences of to deliver to me, to deliver me,
brutal emptiness of millions of tenderly I say, no thanks,
sacrificial my tour of duty, almost done
all of us isolate lambs, in day jailed,
for we still breathing the maybe tainted,
oxygen molecules of no safe surety
a consummate perfection, the same, taming words I tell
the holy quietus of my son, young father,
those no longer breathing, tender me necessary tasks that
they now rest up above, require outside journeys, say I
hid in a white cumulus send me into the red hot areas
cloud cover, a noise suppressing insert me into the front line,
sky coverlet, moving across a militarized zones, he replies,
bright blue pure background, ”you’re too old, part and
a train of funeral caissons, parcel of the most vulnerable,
brutal noisy hooves clacking better-write-you tender-poems”
daily, hourly, the statistical alerts, why so hard, to write tender
brief résumés delivered, so easy of the brutal, their
drumbeating, look now! curses so readily supplied,
are you up to date? is tenderness short supplied?
catalog the debris, organized with brutal necessary efficacy, quantify, qualify the costs, include even the tender ineffable, countdown and graph the brutal calculus of the curve infection, and you, numbed, past the point of eyes capable of what once was tender droplet tearing
highlight the unknown faraway, the tender hope of a distant apex inflection, while plotting the second derivative, the rate of change of the rate of a brutal yet trending upward slope, the ascending all-inclusive stat, infected, the rate of change of decedents, downed, descending, giving in...gowned in hospital blue, for the funeral pyre
a city of lines, crosswalks, velvet ropes, unused, unemployed, social separators, no one about to need to separate, anymore, only the living and the dead, both staying indoors, so neither in attendance, at the empty funeral services, everybody is on the out list...
the now newly indistinguishable, the irresistible collision of two one-sides polarizing poles of no longer opposites, the tender and the brutal in a single embrace, but no, not kissing, embargoed, as we are stationed from above, far, high up on the watchtower observatory, observing the contrast dye that flies so fast on people denuded grand boulevards, down narrow hospital hallways, body-lined decorated, tales of millions of lives isolatized, and don’t forget the brutalizing discovery of scores of elderly, dying alone, withering in the dark, counted, lumped in to the category of statistically irrelevant, if dead, who cares, matters not now, in the afterworld no one asks how,
in a fashion both tenderly and brutal,
what was the actual cause?
Mar 27, 2020
Mar 27, 2020 at 1:08 PM UTC
Twinkle twinkle, you little star,
You don’t deserve this world, by far.
For you got killed with such brutality,
By a few who can’t be questioned about their mentality.
You got dragged into something you could barely
understand,
The aftermath of which left you with a broken hand,
They dispatched you at a dump, cold and dead,
After the sadistic thought of seeking vengeance struck
their head.
Maggots had fested your body,
Rodents had bitten your leg down to bones,
How could they even fathom something so dastard,
Those men without backbones.
As you laid there in the dump,
Your eyes gouged out.
As it reflected your helplessness,
A cleaner saw it and let out a shout.
As the news spread across the nation,
Every citizen might have had a similar notion,
‘Twinkle twinkle, you little star,
You don’t deserve this world, by far!’
Mar 22, 2020
Mar 22, 2020 at 3:40 PM UTC
Hidden behind a wall of
stony thorns,
her horns
are unmistakable.
She smiles and tries
to hide them,
but they are
ridiculously obvious.
The damage is
terminal and savage.
And the pain
is undeniable.
Her forked tongue
pokes the tepid air
and searches for
silly,
trusting victims
Feb 29, 2020
Feb 29, 2020 at 9:12 PM UTC
The sun stood high in a spotless blue sky,
the pool water cool on my skin;
your skin shone with sweat and I seemed to forget
the nightmare that I was trapped in.
That oh so cruel sun of Greece shone on,
never once thought to pause;
it looked down at us as your hands, oh so rough,
collided with my bruised jaw.
Summer went fleeting like every new beating,
it was over soon after begun;
you pulled on my hair and threw me into despair,
and the radio, carefree, played on.
Feb 12, 2020
Feb 12, 2020 at 11:22 AM UTC
Outside, it's cold as ice
But I can feel the blistering heat around my neck.
The burning grip, I can't escape
leaving me mutilated as I cease to breathe
These are the hands of a murderer
inhuman and inanimate
I thrash through the embers
in attempt to escape
the vicegrip that leaves me bleeding,
gasping,
burning amongst the flames
I am a brutalized, bleeding corpse.
Pain and indifference drips onto the floor
with every worthless step that I take
The demons have stabbed me repeatedly
I've lost every drop of humanity I had
Everything I've ever loved has been destroyed
This is not what was meant to be
It's me and my demons, and I've just lost it
Someone's going down, and it's not me
Today I will tear the hands of my demons from my brutalized, mutilated face
I will pull the devil's crushing deathgrip
from my lifeless corpse.
I shall watch the blood pour from his body,
Listen to his bones begin to shatter,
and the screeching sound of his
inhuman, brutal wretching
like the squeals of a pig.
I'll set him ablaze and watch him burn.
The devil's vice-grip hands couldn't hold me down.
I'm ready to start my mission.
I'll tie my demons to a tree
and do unto them what they've done to me
I'll tighten these chains around their neck,
Just like they tried to do to me.
I'll watch them suffer, struggle to breathe
Then I'll tighten these chains some more.
and when they think they've reached the end
I'll stab them with knives a hundred times.
Soak them in gasoline, light the match
I'll watch the flesh fall off their burning bodies.
And I'll do it with a smile on my face.
This job will not be done
until each and every one is wholly
unrecognizable,
Skulls shattered into a million pieces,
Bodies thrashed, cut up and burned
They thought they were certainly
stronger than me.
But they would soon meet their demise.
I put a bullet in all their heads
and they all hit the ground, dead.
They should have listened to what I said.
Should have ****** with someone else instead.
I put bullets in all their heads.
Now they're all ******* dead.
Aug 30, 2019
Aug 30, 2019 at 10:32 AM UTC
It shouldn't hurt this much to be your angel.
It shouldn't bleed this much to be your guide.
It shouldn't pain this much to love you.
It shouldn't scar this much to be by your side.
I'm torn between obsession and hate, for the mess that we made.
But, they come, they go, so replaceable.
I can only have you in my dreams, it seems.
Because reality strikes and you leave me in pieces, ripped apart, wounded, my wings, fallen off, I am burning in loathe.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 11:01 AM UTC
Is joyful and happy
love
never brutal
and always kind?
Aug 7, 2019
Aug 7, 2019 at 10:16 PM UTC
she is the happiest girl
on the playground,
when the hurt is the
most in her heart,
blood flows through
her veins,
but so does a brutal reality,
her kidneys ran out
of tears,
so laughter is the
only thing that pours
out of her.
Jul 22, 2019
Jul 22, 2019 at 12:46 AM UTC