#hallmark
The war of words. Mine versus Yours … for sparkles NOW ?
Why do you even read if all you want to do is hear yourself?
You need someone else to tell you what to think and feel.
Try and find some deeper meaning
that someone else has figured out for you ?
, that you could staple onto your own meaningless unfulfilled excuse for a life.
Or worse yet,
quote me
as you
trying to pass yourself off as brilliant.
What, did you spend 15 minutes of one day thinking
that art was supposed to be or do
for you?
Are you one of those coddled little ***** sycophants?
Whose mommy never stopped providing a V chip safe space for?
Have you spent your whole life never being challenged?
Moping around, pilled up and complaining about being offended
from one participation trophy to another…
( no I’m not a Republican, Karen )
Did you think that life was all supposed to be roses are red violets are blue?
That I'm here to enlighten or entertain you ?
to feed you dopamine?
Another pat on the head.
This isn't tick tock
At least not yet ,
Elliot was a hero for years
but now
I have to swipe right
like and subscribe
for what ? Sparkles ? Am I 10 ?
Stars ?
Too bad you couldn’t make them tin foil and gold
right ?
Wow… reduce my art to a shallow popularity beg
SHAME.
Mar 24
Mar 24, 2026 at 12:09 AM UTC
The leash as a box full of the wrong tools on purpose.
Elegiac prosaic synesthetic turbulence.
A hamburger that DIDN'T resemble Winston Churchill.
Mental imagery sacred or beloved
A rainbow. Painted waterfall. A watermelon. 13 lbs of Cheez **** squeezed from its cans.
We don't try and teach beauty.
The old country.
And the country's even older than that.
Beautiful monkeys. Sleek and grooming. Made of pure crack *******
Flamingos for the yard..
Hippopotamus toothbrush. Calling. Discarded calling cards. Losing lottery scratchers. Litter.
Waste deep
. Waiting.
Drifting deleterious and delicious.
Flocculent enamored nullibiety Deliquesces
Erroneous flamboyance to a Turnbuckle cadence.
There you were an ostrich with no eyelashes .
loved
love and loving,
Lunchbox desire .
No hunger.
Why look too hard or try to understand ? ; when the price tag isn't an explanation.
There's no such thing as nothing from nothing.
Redundancy,
rhythm or repetition ?
The question, the box, the lie. And the bigger box that it came in.
Mouths in entirety , down.
Exotic plastic
desperation...
pre-school connections given up,
Up.
Lottery dreams pre-lost, organically kind and loser efficient if you don't think about it.
Waste-deep the hippie , our shared sweet spot. Any lower and you all drown. Any higher and you must explain yourself.
“Deleterious and delicious” superimposed as intellectual. thesis . Poison frosting ****** Medicine wrapped sugar - death static. discarded Miles Davis accolades unwarranted ,
heaps of Warhols used appropriately as diarrhea toilet paper and nothing was lost.
or gained as they Jackson Pollacked our way back into inane superficial supposition ...
Spoon fed greatness inseparable from talentless wank ,
SOLD !
True talent feels Greek tragedy heroic in the most ineffable way
among
obstacles that just don't care.
Given Pro- wrestling bell rhythms for lobotomy lullabies. Thud, pause, blood, applause. loosed from their earthly bounds as ****** drenched folding chairs.
That eyelashless ostrich hurts more than it shows. Slick wet Naked-eye so black. Unnatural and vulnerable.
Inappropriate feminine attributions.
Love and loving stacked like mismatched discolored Tupperware
Soiled and abused
so many times enjoyed
.
Languid lunchbox libido
pre packaged useless desire .
Want without hunger. Fuel for lost consumers
bath- robed and slippers ; bleary eyed and dead inside...
It ends almost perfectly for a living wiggly waving inflatable air tube clown.
when something comes from nothing.
The mirror not hungry is not empty.
Jan 25
Jan 25, 2026 at 1:40 AM UTC
This Holiday. The ice may be free,
But I am missing important
People dancing around my mind
In imaginary ice-skates,
Making this A Solemn Season. I used to watch
The couples ice-skating competitions with
My Gramma, and
My Pop-Pop,
Never knowing what ice-skating had,
Really meant to my
Grandparents,
Until recent years,
When it was revealed that
The Ice Capades was their first date.
I am watching Holiday Hallmark
Ice-skating movies, reminiscing
The ice-dancers,
And the festive
Christmas music playing in the background,
Has given me reverberating ice-tears.
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 27, 2025
Nov 27, 2025 at 9:35 PM UTC
Is there love in a coffeehouse?
Like those silly Hallmark movies?
Coffee is love
But hides in mystery
In laptops and cell phones
In wandering eyes
And ****** musings
In the buzzing sounds of a lovely brew
To be consumed by you
Mar 17, 2024
Mar 17, 2024 at 3:34 PM UTC
bent Hallmark card (for BJ Donovan)
*”I'm a bent Hallmark card with no stamp. It won't reach my love”
BJ Donovan (HP gone, Gray Dotted, r.i.p.)*
at the drug store, loose poems,
no right-sized envelopes left,
loosie cigs, for newly ‘underemployed’
both, thumbed, finger oil anointed-stained,
and
bent
all available for purchase
24/7, in these United States,
in national drugstores jailed,
kept in “chains” till discarded
therein hides the rub-bled best,^^
great verse writings, deadline-
inspired in a Ohio bullpen office,
@ corp. HQ by an Eng. Lit. major
composed, vetted, approved, yet
marked ‘failure,’ by quality control,
third Tuesday of every month, ritualized,
manager freshens display, victims chosen
Hallmark display, pruning the die-marked,
the no-hope cards, consigned, to a green
in-the-back-garbage dumpster resting place,
where you just may see me climbing-in
(and where America safe keeps its treasures)
droning on, as per usual, I’m kicked away by a
rent-a-cop, muttering insurance assurances, just
business, not personal, grab what cards I can, mine,
stolen pleasures, resending via insertion here ‘n there
my resurrection act, a new business, wife thinks
me stinks, but for me, a perfume of saved words,
an act of rebirthing, god bless America, making it
great by giving Hallmark poems a second chance
gonna send one of those cards in envelope,
addressed to BJ Donovan U.S.A., no stamp,
inside note, your poems were ordinal, small
plates of sardonic pith, human foibles, on being
old, recalling youth, both celebrated, Icarus and Daedalus
pretty sure this poem may not get there but I believe
in poetry and the US Post Office, who delivers
mail to me, marked “Nat”^ and to Santa Claus,
which impresses, cause I’m mythical, he’s real
*your compositions were breathtaking, literally,
miss your hallmarked witticisms, criticisms,
glad you escaped that virus nursing home jail,
if needed, write to “Nat, NYC, living somewhere
in a park, scribbling close by the East River”^*
I’ll get it, like I got you, they know my special tree,
and the rock nearby, that too, is a known hideout,
no worries buddy good stuff may perish, but somehow
it gets a second wind, can’t keep a good scrip, down forever...
a very humbled admirer...
NaTTy
Jun 15, 2020
Jun 15, 2020 at 1:01 PM UTC
An Obscenity Trial
by Michael R. Burch
The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints
against whom several critics cited numerous complaints.
They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd,"
and they said his poems incited recitals far too loud.
The prosecutor alleged himself most artful (and best-dressed);
it seems he’d never lost a case, nor really once been pressed.
He was known far and wide for intensely hating clarity;
twelve dilettantes at once declared the defendant another fatality.
The judge was an intellectual well-known for his great mind,
though not for being merciful, honest, sane or kind.
Clerics called him the "Hanging Judge" and the critics were his kin.
Bystanders said, "They'll crucify him!" The public was not let in.
The prosecutor began his case by spitting in the poet's face,
knowing the trial would be a farce.
"It is obscene," he screamed, "to expose the naked heart!"
The recorder (bewildered Society), well aware of his notoriety,
greeted this statement with applause.
"This man is no poet. Just look—his Hallmark shows it.
Why, see, he utilizes rhyme, symmetry and grammar! He speaks without a stammer!
His sense of rhythm is too fine!
He does not use recondite words or conjure ancient Latin verbs.
This man is an imposter!
I ask that his sentence be . . . the almost perceptible indignity
of removal from the Post-Modernistic roster!"
The jury left, in tears of joy, literally sequestered.
The defendant sighed in mild despair, "Might I not answer to my peers?"
But how His Honor giggled then,
seeing no poets were let in.
Later, the clashing symbols of their pronouncements drove him mad
and he admitted both rhyme and reason were bad.
Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea and Poetry Life & Times
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 3:41 AM UTC
I don't need stories of battles
Between knights and dragons
In the days of old.
I don't have dreams
Of everything I touch turning to gold.
I don't need to walk on water
Or turn water into wine.
I have enough magic in my life
Because you're mine.
Aug 5, 2019
Aug 5, 2019 at 7:34 PM UTC
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Paper Paper Paper Paper
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May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 1:40 PM UTC
Mothers day is fine
I don't mind it
not one bit
except when TV tells me
to buy up gifts n' ****
I really love my mother
I love her every day
so if I spend some money
will it be better
love to play?
If I buy her pretty flowers
or a fancy Ipod case
will she think that I so love her
more than words
could ever say?
How 'bout I draw a picture
just like the good ol' days
or make her something special
like an ashtray
made of clay
My kids I know they love me
they show me all the time
they don't need to
buy me presents
I know that they are mine.
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 8:19 PM UTC
I remember the first time I saw your face.
You, with an intense stare, a perplexed glare,
scrutinizing everything that was there.
Searching..
Looking for the perfect rhyme, an eye-catching design.
Going down the line I hoped you would find joy in mine,
and you did.
I remember the energy in your smile on the ride home.
Your nervous hand was hesitant to put pen to paper, wanting everything to be perfect.
Every piece of that puzzling emotion put together in a way that would show how much you loved her,
and soon you could.
You opened my chest and on my heart you wrote what was on yours.
From that point forth I became a door.
I was an extension of your adoration and affection.
You felt like you were on top of the world,
and you were.
I remember the excitement the day you gave me to her,
I felt it too.
The words were coming alive, flowing from her lips like the most intoxicating wine.
Oh, how I wanted her to love you,
and for a moment she did.
But after a while I was put in a box.
I collected dust while she became bitter; a war was started,
one with no winner.
The words on my heart had lost their glimmer,
and so did yours.
I remember the last time I saw your face.
Unfamiliar, Unattached, you were not the same.
Something came, a sadness untamed.
Those words on my heart became a source of pain.
So you ripped me apart..
Piece by piece..
Just like she did to you.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 7:52 PM UTC
I love the way you said
“Yes darling, my honey
It makes me feel good inside
your touch
that look in your eyes
became an instant hallmark memory
From someone who really cares
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 2:14 AM UTC
Saturday night I'm staying silent for men who think they're clever. Congregations of children with nothing better to do.
Echoes of our Hallmark love is now in transit with this big hero almost ending. The door slams and puts brakes on our Big Finish while each coin is reprimanded.
For every hour of school you miss a pizza's abandoned. Breaking waves on my shoulders, I never imagined you'd be the one to expire in my California.
Charlie waits for us in the airplane, while Thomas and Callan still chat. You purse your lip and bite on your fingers, but you don't realize that I remind you of guilt.
Anguish and islands, stars on the inside's of your eyelids.
And blood in your underwear.
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 9:42 PM UTC
I try to remember the "good times."
Just to realize I'm drowning,
Drowning on Hallmark lines
Remembering the "good times"
Smiling complacently
Drowning on Hallmark lines
And I realize the memories
Were all good
One lines.
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 5:24 PM UTC