#semantics
Within the idyllic place,
where Man and Might sit beyond thunderbolt blights,
the average comic goon sings eternal.
No tombstone garter waits his limbs,
no broken bones a fate to fend;
his imagined pains become nonstarter.
So to say, the thoughtful rays
of sun and moon and bartered
goods in page, in morass and rage:
Each-every word does matter.
Oct 22, 2025
Oct 22, 2025 at 5:12 PM UTC
Syntax builds the fragile frame,
A structure bound by rules and name.
Each line, each mar, a puzzle piece,
The form that brings our thoughts release.
Semantics, though, is where it lives,
The meaning that the order gives.
A word alone, a line of code,
Means nothing till its truth is showed.
Syntax lays the path we tread,
The map of where our thoughts are lead.
But meaning waits beneath the lines,
In symbols, shapes, and quiet signs.
Without the rules, we’d lose our way.
But without meaning, there’s no say.
So syntax shapes, semantics breathes,
Together, language weaves and weaves.
Apr 5, 2025
Apr 5, 2025 at 10:01 AM UTC
My technoscribbles haven't all cachet;
A mother hen on Friday farts an egg.
Even a swill of parlance has a say
When maple roadmaps varicose a leg.
A skinnydipping nakedest remote
Viewer that loons a dreaming skims a pond
Fractals a nascent green and gleimous note
Hanging athwart with someone's else's blonde.
Take heart. The fish have lungs and breathe the air
Of a new day when everyfish can ***
With or without a whiff of underwear,
Though salty tears are sweetest 'neath the sea.
Milfs are a pack of pickleballing hots
Playing to win a plate of tater tots.
*
Aug 3, 2024
Aug 3, 2024 at 7:18 PM UTC
for have you not known by now,
the person standing in front of you,
became a mad poet, with deranged
semantics and demented letters,
offered to convey a lover’s
delusional affections.
Sep 28, 2023
Sep 28, 2023 at 2:27 AM UTC
You’re a wolf -
A connotation.
You’re a breed
of imitation.
You’re a guise
among the sheep.
Snagging lambs
while they’re asleep.
Your smile sings
with consonance -
but your howls vibrate
with dissonance.
You’re a liar
with eyes of fire -
The termination
of my desire.
You sparked a change
in my perception.
You were the Alpha
of pure deception.
May 25, 2023
May 25, 2023 at 1:13 PM UTC
i can
conjurer up words
mix delicate
intricacies of verse
with poetic license
i might defecate
upon scripted genius
of the past
a scourge
on the eloquence
of perfected prose
a pariah
with semantics
that hang in the air
like a frequented noose
the rhetoric of
this rhetoric
both dumbfounds
and delights
the agenda of the learned;
to supress
the syntax spat forth
the phlegm and catarrh
of a gut
of derivatives
i could compose
a verse
for young lovers
to cherish
if i could
only stop
the rot;
genius
nonsense
or ignorance
i couldn't
tell you
which
May 7, 2022
May 7, 2022 at 7:41 PM UTC
Does anyone know the difference between feeling butterflies and feeling nervous?
Because they’re staring to feel like the same **** thing.
I think I’m in love with you.
Jan 22, 2022
Jan 22, 2022 at 1:34 AM UTC
You howl across the smartphone speakers
“unstable”
I roar back,
“healing.”
Ah, semantics.
You cling to definitions tighter than static
Your arguments are magnets to my geyser:
stuck, yet I flow on
You build a face for the day,
reinforce it, ready for the wrecking ***** in our vernacular
nothing will shake your perspective
your eyes are glasses to our periscope
The things you’ve been told are just that
and my illness doesn’t make me any less blood and bone
any less ups and downs
any less success and collapse
than you
despite what you’ve heard about depression from some friends or a Facebook post
it’s more than a daily beast
it’s a mountain to climb with only one arm
and I’m on my way to stable footing
You want to attach words like “lazy” and “uncaring” to my identity
go ahead, I pick them off like fleas
they can only drain me for as long as I let them.
I will say “suffering”
you might say “a lil’ sad”
we both sit there, hoping truth blessed us with its language
Only one thing is for certain.
Whatever “it” may be
It.
Won’t.
Stop.
Me.
Feb 4, 2020
Feb 4, 2020 at 4:52 PM UTC
I saw a good person do a bad thing once
I thought I was a good person but I did a bad thing once, too
Have you ever seen a good person do a bad thing?
Have you ever been the good person doing a bad thing (on occasion)?
Have you ever seen...
<>the bars that imprison you?<>
Have you ever been...
<>the bars that imprison you?<>
There is a potential to be stuck behind the words & letters...
of this Song to the Open Road
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But look at the stars
| | | |
And look at the bars
|A|n|d| |re|a|l|i|z|e| |t|h|e| |j|a|i|l|e|r| |i|s| |y|o|u|
Jan 15, 2018
Jan 15, 2018 at 7:41 PM UTC
We are just arguing over semantics,
when we both know that
what I said is true.
I could have said it another way,
but that will not change what is important -
the truth.
Accept this,
or choose to judge the way I speak...
but I am correct.
Do not let emotion
cloud your judgement,
or anger douse what is real.
I may be mean,
while ignorance is bliss...
but I choose to remain above all this.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 9:49 AM UTC
I remember being in elementary,(a)
I was constantly bored with the(b)
Drivel. Learn what they teach,(b)
Never mind differences, Jamie;(a)
Just memorise the drill.
I remember the Spelling Bee,(c)
They were impressed by me.(c)
They thought it strange to go(d)
So well, since I slept or wrote(d)
Thru ev'ry class; never to note.(d)
"How in the Hell is it that you won(e)
At Spelling, I was State Champion(e)
At my old school!??! Teach said you(f)
Do your thing; you haven't a clue;(f)
I came in 2nd to you?!!?"(f)
I said, "It takes a simple mind to learn(g)
Simply, therefore you were not beaten(h)
By me: but rather by Arrogance, Hern."(g)
What does that mean, asked she.
Ihopeby now Hern has figured how
A writer obsessed in each class, Recess,
At Lunch, on the Cheese Wagon a bunch,
Won Spelling Bees -Still stuck on studies.
Feb 7, 2017
Feb 7, 2017 at 6:58 PM UTC
You asked me my name in your first remark
We sat on opposite ends of a question mark
You were dashing - made me pause,
me, this independent clause
standing alone,
I made sense on my own
But I answered you anyway.
Ellipses.
Now you are the verb in my heart’s contraction
I am the subject and you are the action
An Interrogative with a Declarative reaction
An Exclamatory and then an Imperative attraction
Ellipses.
Your lips ease
Me, the direct object of your affection,
but never sentenced to an apostrophe’s possession
perhaps more true- a plural “s” suggestion
and the excitement behind an exclamation point’s inflection
The semi-colon understands
We can be on our own, but we want to stand
together
where our letters
aren’t fetters,
but the typesetter’s
better measure
of linguistic pleasure.
We communicate through metaphors and similes
Like the birds and the bees
We speak across homophone lines
to keep a census of our senses at all times
Because words said aloud have allowed
us to find meaning behind the utterance of sound-
mere words and phrases
jumping off of pages
into brain and heart and soul
when the parts become a whole
And with the syntax, punctuation, grammar, and usage
I’m a hopeless semantic always trying to ****** it
Language- yours I understand through the myriad.
Words can’t capture you. Period.
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 10:50 PM UTC
look,
she will never tell you her deepest secrets or kiss you quite long enough to feel whole. and some nights she will sneak out of bed and yell when you follow her, because there are nights when she needs to breathe and there have been too many fires too close to her throat lately.
let her go. tell her you know about thunderstorms, about storms so rough you seem to topple over at the thought of them—tell her, you too, have felt the earth shake beneath the soles of your feet a few times too many to stay still.
you don’t have to kiss her scars. you just have to kiss her.
boy, on good days, take her by her bruised hands and lead her to a place where you have always found sanctuary. kiss her then. she will trace your bones with her tongue and lay her hand on your chest to check if you’re hollow. kiss her then. sometimes she will smoke to fill herself with something else than pain. kiss her then.
look: when she trembles so loud you can hear her empty bones rattle, place one hand in her hair and one on her hip and kiss her. kiss her until she stills. being an avalanche like her is exhausting, but sometimes she just won’t know how to stop it.
when she falls asleep on the couch again, know that she is not avoiding you. she’s avoiding the emptiness of having you so close she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to touch yet. she doesn’t know if she earned it yet. and when you see her do her workout routine twice, it’s because the couch is giving her trouble sleeping—even more than the bed did. she hopes she will be too tired to care this way.
take her by the hand again. take her to bed. place her head on your chest. show her it’s alright to touch.
when she tells you she’s been counting the cracks in the ceiling because her head is filled with ideas of death and despair, repaint it. tell her this is a new colour for new thoughts and new beginnings. cover her eyes. kiss her eyelids. tell her they don’t always filter light but they don’t have to. tell her it’s alright to be an avalanche. tell her it’s alright to be an avalanche.
but remember this: when you are ready to fall to your knees, she will be there. when you feel the earth tremble beneath your feet, she will be there. and when your hands shake so much you don’t think you can hold her anymore, she will be there.
there is so much more to her than just something to hold. she’s not just this anger, she’s not just this closeness in her veins that makes you forget the way home, she is so much more than just gritting teeth and letting it go.
when you are ready to fall, she will always be there to catch you. remember: she knows the ripple of hurt that tears through your body so violently—she knows how it feels. she has felt it herself. when you tremble, she will make you still. when you tremble, she will make you still.
this is not just about her. this is about you, too. about the cracks in your ceiling. about your avalanche. realise that she understands. when you lay your head on her chest to check if she is hollow, realise she knows exactly what you’re doing. when you ask her to pass the cigarette, realise that she too, knows how it feels to fill yourself with something besides pain.
oh sweetheart, when the vastness of her love makes you agoraphobic, she will take you to the place she loves most and kiss you. she will kiss you breathless. don’t you know it’s in her blood to take care of you?
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 3:19 PM UTC
Poetry, the attunement of syllables,
harsh sounds, soft sounds,
rhythmic stanzas
pleasing to the iris,
sound waves to the ear
drums invite Neurons
to experience ecstasy.
They celebrate in unison,
shouts of cheer, roars of joy,
electric screams of fulfillment.
Some pass out in disbelief,
others wave handkerchiefs
in the air and shout
Yes, that’s right!
While somewhere in the limbic
system, the other side
of the hemisphere they whisper,
No, that’s not what we meant at all.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 11:51 AM UTC
As I stand before you today, on Valentines day
I can’t help but feel my knees still shake and buckle, when I see that Sparkle light up the center of your beautiful, brown eyes
My love for you has never died, I’ve always been head over heels
Since the day you ripped off the disguise that kept the insecurities dwelling inside of that mind of yours
And I’m sure you’ve heard it come out from my mouth before, but I really do love you Joanna
From here, all the way to Savanah
Just so you understand that,
I’m a man who speaks his love with certainty
And I’m no hopeless romantic, but I do understand the semantics of love So it’s spoken above, all as more than just 2 consonants accommodating 2 vowels
Love isn’t just about writing vows
To be wed for life, through sickness and strife
It’s never alright for just these 4 letters, to be the only justification for people like us to stay together
There is no universal definition given
Although hallmark will tell you different
Giving advertisement prescriptions to those experiencing affliction from solitude
So rudely turning love into an addiction
Completely missing the point of what it means to share yourself with someone else
Love was when I saw demons inside of your eyes that you never felt obliged to hide from me
Because you saw mine too
Right through every facade I built up, consistently falling right back down
I always wanted to be around someone I never had to hid a frown from
Infatuated with the sound you created, from my heart palpating around you
I just knew
That what we had was not something superficial
It was official, so we made it that way
And today, I tell you how much I love you
Not only as a lover, but more so as a friend
Because time and time again, you never fail to be there for me
As far as the eye can see, what we have puts the definition of love to shame
In my opinion, it deserves it’s own picture frame
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 1:02 PM UTC