#philadelphia
The cheapest of cheap plebeian drugs:
Burn and loot when police shoot thugs.
Oct 28, 2020
Oct 28, 2020 at 9:44 AM UTC
A romance in Philly
And a farewell in Chestnut Hill
Fall leaves on that twilight
Were at least charismatic
All of a sudden, I felt mangled
Totally torn and tiresome
I felt literally like...
Having a pair of cotton legs
And two velvet arms
The fight against oblivion
Was still a fearsome step
But I still recall
That dizzy whirlwind in my skull
And that swirly typhoon in my core
In spite of the splendour of Philly
And the enchantment of its heavenly wonders
I was lonely to yell and weep
I was the twilight drama queen
Oct 26, 2020
Oct 26, 2020 at 5:39 PM UTC
In Philadelphia
The City of Brotherly love
The Bell of freedom chimes
The Wall of Independence rises
Art and lifestyle flourish everywhere
Its history is recorded on all the walls
Its glory is forever stored in the annals
Oct 26, 2020
Oct 26, 2020 at 5:35 PM UTC
Ya Know On My Travels …
I Now Sit in Sandals...
In Rittenhouse Park...
In … Central Philly …
But It's FAR From Chilly... !!!
It's The End of May...
On A Beautiful Day … !!!
I Hear SIRENS HARK …
Like A Shot In The Dark … !!!
Yet … NO WALMART...
And NO Gun Sounds … !!!!!
Dogs … ALL AROUND …
But … HARDLY A Bark... ?!?
****** Types of SO MANY KINDS... !!!
That It's HARD For My Eyes …
To Deal With The SIZE …
of … Some of The THIGHS …
These Girls Just CANNOT HIDE … !!!!!
YES Some Look NICE … !!!
But I'm NOT Surprised …
At The Fact That MANY …
Are WAY TOO HEAVY …
For Me To Like …. !!!!!
I'm Playing The Sounds …
of The Man... Kev Brown …
But They Hardly Drown...
The Sounds That Surround …
From... PHILLY' Mouths...
The Accents DROOL...
And Sound Kinda Cool …
To A Man Like ME...
Whose English Speech …
No Longer Seems So Great INDEED …
I'm Now Travelling From …
Those BAJAN' Scenes …
of … BEAUTIFUL Seas …
And Fresh Sea Breeze... !!!!!!
Whilst Here In Philly …
I Can Feel The Breeze Squeeze … !!!
In Amongst The Trees …
of Much That Is NOT …
….. " Brotherly " ….. ?!?
But The Trace of **** …
Blows Like The Leaves …
In … Rittenhouse Square …
Where It's CLEAR Some Dare...
To …. LIGHT Up Trees ….
Where Park Rangers Be … !!!
It's A Thing of BEAUTY …
To Feel … SO FREE … !!!
On This Journey..............
That Has Taken Me …
And My … Voyeurs GLARE …
To The City of Philly …
And ………..
... " Rittenhouse Square "...
Oct 8, 2020
Oct 8, 2020 at 7:41 PM UTC
gallery of
the grievers
ween afar
in plane
to propel
the dance
yet triple
in wings
that triage
Mekong dry-cleaner
those drastic
maitres'd the
guns of
Queen Village
noise plays
guitar in
Market Square
Jul 20, 2020
Jul 20, 2020 at 12:06 PM UTC
What time is it in Philadelphia?
What's a mile in k-m's?
How much is that in Australian?
What the heck is a chimichanga?
Our liberal party is right wing
We drive on the left side
I'll educate girls: American
I'll share my way of life
And even though the differences
Instructs the way we live
We will still form bonds through our phones
I'll stay appreciative
Jan 21, 2020
Jan 21, 2020 at 11:59 AM UTC
I know when it is time to turn the light,
blow out the summer candle,
and allow winter its cold overbearing step.
logic and reason reaches my tongue,
the darkness tastes like cold
settling my body in for a long
empty sleep...
I dream of bad decisions between my fingers.
they taste like summer,
you,
and regret
after the mistakes were made.
warmth has made it so easy
to love you in my dreams...
waking up to the cold
is harder than it seems.
Dec 13, 2019
Dec 13, 2019 at 2:11 PM UTC
dear lover,
I promise I will stop bringing up his name
over late-night calls, 
cups of bitter coffee,
and my lonely bed.
I will give you my love
like it is your first glass of water,
your dry, thirsty eyes allow me
to believe in second chances.
I will never trap you,
pin you down like butterflies in the frame,
for my broken wings know the feeling
of watching your love say goodbye
behind a piece of glass.
I promise we will make love
without an expiration date tattooed
on our inner thighs.
I will hold you, despite wondering
if this is the last time your hands
will touch mine.
I promise I will wear your heart on my sleeve
like a new coat,
putting the scratchy, hand-me-down fabric 
back in the closet.
I’m sorry if he still makes me cry.
his name still sounds like guns falling
onto the oak tree roots outside of your window.
I will grow from this.
I’m still waiting for those shots to stop ringing in my ears
when you tell me you love me.
I was just dragged out of a cold war,
my blood is now too warm to clean up
the battlefield he has made of me.
dear lover,
I promise one day my wounds will heal,
that the only scars you will need to love
are my stretch marks.
I’m glad you understand
that empty promises are Band-Aids over bones,
they will never heal me.
thank you for holding me as I bleed and cry,
and thank you for letting me speak of him
one last time.
sincerely,
-me
Nov 8, 2019
Nov 8, 2019 at 2:08 PM UTC
“Thy people shall be my people”
-Ruth 1:16
Smoke rises here from foul Gehenna’s fires
Fires set by souls twisted like cold barbed wire
Sole argument of ideologies
Strung geometrically from hate to hate
Smoke rises here; soft ashes fall as death
Torah, Mishnah, and Gemera – and us
For without the Word and the People Israel
We are but wraiths, and darkly blown about
O Israel!
You are the broom tree in the wilderness
The Tree of Life who shelters all with love
You are the tent of Sarah and Abraham
And we are blessed who find refuge in you
Oct 28, 2018
Oct 28, 2018 at 10:56 AM UTC
person feels a wave of heat through their neck and face when struck with a thought of their ex boyfriend. a ninth grader gives them a ***** look. person leans against a cold cinderblock wall and relaxes their face. focus on the empty space between the eyeballs and the brain. feel the limp arms and identify the beat of a pulse running through them. repeat after me: self care is boring.
paul laurence dunbar knows why the caged bird sings. he never wanted to be an elevator operator. it's a point of privilege. person asks a ninth grader if a bird could see the wind, the river, the sun. "oh... no..."
one thing person notices time and again is that when these students drop something they do not pick it up. they let someone else do it. where person is from it is not like that. students would not help person like that, they think.
person remembers one time, when they themselves were in the ninth grade, dropping their lunchbox in a crowded hallway and picking it up swiftly in the next step without slowing down. a tall boy behind them said "smooth". person felt proud at the time. person feels good remembering this.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 7:44 PM UTC
Big fat raindrops feed the flower design on my jacket.
And while I love these summer rains
(With their temperature shifts and chances for quiet contemplation)
I really wish I brought an umbrella with me
When I decided to walk out the door this morning.
Because now I look like a cat
Who wants to **** the owner
Who tried to give that cat a bath.
Jun 12, 2017
Jun 12, 2017 at 10:18 AM UTC
It was warm when I arrived in that big city- a suitcase and my purse are the only legacies I had left to my name.
I could start over here.
I could be someone new here.
My driver was a nice man from Delaware- he told me that the city was old and that I was brave for traveling so far alone.
He was a kind man.
He told me the weather was going to change soon.
He knew nothing about me... I don't think I knew anything about me.
We got to this broke down apartment over in West Philadelphia.
I remember thinking... this can't be the right address.
But it was and that was just the beginning to my endless self struggle.
I thought I could start over here.
The weather changed fast- overnight it was freezing and I was struggling to find warm enough clothes.
I remember thinking... how the **** can anyone live here?
I remember thinking ... how the **** am I going to make it here?
I learned a lot about myself that month I spent in the city.
I learned how to take a subway, how to take a bus, who to talk too and who to avoid.
I learned I can survive being alone.
I also learned.... you can't run from yourself.
You can't change as quickly as the weather.
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 3:37 PM UTC
I ponder what my parents told me,
“The light in your eyes is back.”
Not because I am happy,
(or sober…)
Its because I stare at the dimly lit skyline
In the City of Brotherly Love,
In a melancholy manner.
While I could make some cliché allegory
Of a cigarette being another source of faint luminescence.
But I am a college student,
A speck of a presence drowning in dimwits,
With such bright futures ahead!
(Along with a large sum of debt.)
So while I sit and stare
At the city lights,
Soaking in suicidal thoughts at the SEPTA station.
Remember the light in my eyes
Is a reflection of those city lights.
Dimly lit,
Not aflame.
I have no one but myself to blame.
Apr 3, 2017
Apr 3, 2017 at 3:37 PM UTC
There is a building
with two people's chalk silhouettes painted
High up
Super high up
on the front.
Did they jump?
Or were they traced on the ground and the house was flipped right side up?
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 12:40 PM UTC
A Woman brought her Baby to a Kink Store Yesterday.
She filled her Stroller to the Brim,
And then She Rolled Away.
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 12:59 PM UTC
And once his friends
could walk to work with them
in neighborhoods to and fro there,
they came more moderate from near and far
as Gulielma wasn't there anymore and through their own
when week-ends could meander upstream with them both or alone
they would keep these dreams alive here,
a triumph in Penn Manor now Collegeville nigh
where she stay in times that heat up in spite of theirs
and might of luck be there till sunset still host wares of Philadelphia round today.
Nov 7, 2016
Nov 7, 2016 at 6:29 AM UTC
I let you go
to Philadelphia
I let you go
thirteen goin' on “life”
to your momma-- (God rest her-- and keep you
--from wherever she is)
to your father in Philly
outa the picture
Sheepish in the doorway of my classroom
back again
one last time--
Say good-bye, kid, to your short stay in Scranton
a town that can't rhyme
whose name falls over its own misery
No use for outsiders
“Where's your book?
Found your binder in the rain
Soggy protest to school's demands?
Of course it's yours
I checked, ya know”
"No way!"
Desk's been empty, three weeks now
Still, gotta ask
“Whacha doin?
Where ya been?”
“Khmir,
I'm sorry for your loss....”
Thirty seconds shares our grief
Thirty seconds for your future's-- all I got
“Listen to your teachers!
Do your work!
Please-- be okay?”
Khmir
in your wooly black coat-- like a bear
like a dare
shruggin and dancin in the doorway
of the “show”
Homework? Aint happenin'
But one paper, though
on why--
YOU-- should be president
and I almost vote for you
Oct 24, 2016
Oct 24, 2016 at 3:24 PM UTC
There is a woman,
Covered entirely in fur,
Staring at me as I skip on by.
She's been there for, 10, 20, 40 years,
Watching.
Watching her corner parks turn into gas stations
And watching me walk.
And sometimes I stop.
And I stare.
And it takes everything in my body not to throw a brick through the window and take her for my wall.
And I wonder
How on earth is she still there
Beautiful
Poised
With nothing but dust covering her smile.
Because I can't be the first person to have wanted her like that.
I look.
Like a lost museum patron.
And then I keep walking.
Because most things
And all people
Are meant to stay beautiful.
And untouched.
Unless they ask you.
Or you own it.
Jun 19, 2016
Jun 19, 2016 at 6:30 PM UTC
I got them broken down, whiskey blood, drank too much ****** beer and didn't sleep enough, tumbleweave, cigarette **** city wide blues.
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 8:30 PM UTC
Entering a world composed of surreal images
My mind must twist itself into difficult yoga poses
Attempting comprehension of the madness
Black aprons meander in rhythmic gyrations
Under harsh soul stealing luminescence
Lubricated with coffee to perform
Menial machinations miserably
I am but a tourist
On their macabre island full
With nightmarish denizens
Of this local purgatory
The poet dreamt of no circle
As dreadfully inhabited as this sinister strata
Easily a septante of sins sordidly succumbed to by soulless citizens
Apathetic arrogance masquerading as hospitality
While decency and morality are assaulted
According to the overlords abusive schedule
I am struck mute with paralytic paranoia
As I hurriedly set my offering upon the altar
And search for exact change
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 9:45 PM UTC
They warn us that fever travels in the air,
so women pull the shutters closed and keep
children out of the empty, heady streets.
Grandpa tries to assure me we are safe,
that yellow fever will stop when the ports
close. He never speaks of how the victims suffer,
shuts the curtains against my anxious eyes
as the bodies are removed, but rumors catch
the breezes, too.
Vomiting, bleeding from the nose and mouth,
the eyes yellow, and then victims reach out
in a last fit of delirium, demanding forgiveness
from God’s wrath as He turns them the sallow
shade of the September sun. This is the color
of a body when salvation fractures
from the depths of their souls.
Each day, the count of the dead rises.
My cousin, the milkman, a widow down the block—
all pass within hours. The Quakers deem
this the Almighty’s will, his “rod.” Physicians
bleed the sick, and I think not to rid them of disease,
but to account for sin.
We all hope for frost. I know Grandpa will not leave
the city, but I do not imagine his eyes yellowing,
for pride keeps them clear of exhaustion
and glaze from inviting liquor or laudanum.
My whole body sweats from dreams
of corpses the color of tobacco-stained teeth,
blood pouring from eyes like tears, each one dropping
to the ground. I wake up, dizzy in smeared-red sheets,
my nightgown smelling like a mausoleum, but I do not
call for help because I’ve been waiting to look
into the face of God, to see my yellowed city’s reflection.
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 9:17 PM UTC