#tropes
You read my poem,
sighed like a widowed cello,
told me I was
so brave.
So sensitive.
So real.
I said thanks.
You asked if I was free
Friday.
You wanted to know the man
behind the wound.
The author of ache.
The architect of vibes.
So I showed up.
A little unwashed.
A little twitchy.
A patchwork of trauma
in ill-fitting pants.
You blinked.
Twice.
Like I’d just tracked in mud
on the white carpet
of your curated suffering.
You wanted a candlelit meal
with my metaphors.
But I brought the cow.
It shat on the floor.
I tried to explain—
the sadness isn’t a costume.
The pain isn’t prose.
The blood on the page
was mine.
You said,
“I just thought you'd be more… together?”
I said,
“I thought you knew what empathy meant.”
Turns out,
what you really wanted
was artisanal anguish
with the trauma locally sourced
but ethically removed.
You can cry to the soundtrack—
just don’t ask where the violins came from.
Because—
Nobody is amused with a stray cow.
But most people enjoy
a good hamburger.
Apr 15, 2025
Apr 15, 2025 at 11:47 PM UTC
Should I write a poem about Halloween,
full of psychological horrors and gruesome things?
Like deep romantic wounds getting infected,
herpe kisses or Donald Trump getting elected?
I could lean on shuddery tropes, like haunted houses
or more real world threats, like cutthroat spouses.
I could make you look up scary looking words, like Syncretism.
gasp What caused that creek in the floor?!
Who’s that banging on the door?
Is that blood on that rag?
Is there a body in that bag?
Is that your husband in drag!?
Relax, have fun, chill-out,
Oh, better get a bowl of candy out.
Happy Halloween!
.
.
Songs for this:
Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers
I Killed You by Tyler, The Creator
Oct 30, 2024
Oct 30, 2024 at 12:07 PM UTC
She's a would-be
Disney villainess
a temptress
She's a would-be
empress
a mogul-ess
She's a fear
and she's a longing
distant and yet, oh-so-near
She's a myth
and she's a nightmare
so subtle, yet full of pith
And so unreal
yet in reality, so sad
all because, she's ******* mad
Mad like the full moon
mad enough to tear her hair
don't you stare
Trope upon trope
we lay upon the forbidden woman
the discarded woman without hope
If only we had the eye of compassion
instead of berating her for her passion
we'd heal our lost mothers and daughters at last
Dec 7, 2020
Dec 7, 2020 at 12:58 AM UTC
darling, how are you today?
i'm months into my first heartbreak
and i wonder if you're the same.
mayhaps our souls haven't crossed yet
and your eyes haven't experienced
the first touch of color
if we look at each other,
or how the red string of fate
grows shorter and shorter
as we wade into a thousand years
brought about by
our constant reincarnations.
i would wait a hundred lifetimes,
swim through a sea of heartbreaks
(like now),
go through a life where
you don't exist,
or you drive a knife to my chest,
if it means there exists such a thing—
where there is even just a single timeline
where i get to touch your lips with my fingers
and hold you in my arms as you sleep soundly,
as our hearts beat closer and closer.
Feb 12, 2020
Feb 12, 2020 at 6:52 AM UTC
Anyone would know of Oedipus's fate or Medea's grief,
But our play isn't fair told,
Of ardent love and enthusiastic script reading down by the riverside's muddy banks,
More than the mere characters written down and thread sewn into costumes,
We wept of tragedies and sang of comedies,
How did I not foresee this classic catastrophe!
I passionately loved that budding boy in his evening dress with all my heart,
So sure was I that he was completely mutual!
But deep in his breast, a polarized hunger writhed,
He kissed me as sweet as the near flourishing plum trees,
Before the Moon witnessed him slump to chafed knees in prayers,
Stripped bare to the sheer undergarments in the chilled windy night,
Chains were buckled to weights and clasped around his ankles,
He pitched himself in the frigid raucous waters with no bubbling scream of regret,
And soon washed ashore bloated blue and bruised purple,
Wail I did like the haunting banshees of Ireland!
No kiss would suffice to bring back his dissolved spirit,
When the mortician pumped his chest, a flow of diseased water gushed forth,
A brush of hand on a face that will no longer alight,
A turn of head shading the constant acidic tears,
A flash of white law before being torn to shreds in fits,
To leave smoothed stones and ribboned anemone once his body was removed.
Dec 14, 2019
Dec 14, 2019 at 12:35 PM UTC
Freedom and justice.
Only if you're one of us, that is.
A shining star.
A beacon of hope.
The truth from afar, now seems like one of tropes.
Jan 21, 2019
Jan 21, 2019 at 3:26 PM UTC
Oh please, not sunshine and 'here I sit" blank-page laments
Season-change ballads and idle-moment thoughts.
My muses are all sedentary and lethargic,
Only speaking up to demand another grape
Fed from dangling fingers.
Sure, the sun is streaming nicely in the window
And a reluctant spring has given way
To summer-like days, as I sit and ponder.
But the tropes and exclaims of 'excelsior!'
Aren't going to cut it this time.
Gold-leafed chaises longues and silver goblets
Are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalk
A pile of plus-sized togae thrown into the mix
A cardboard box of minstrels' greatest hits vinyl too.
The bums are sent packing
And my poem is concluded.
May 6, 2018
May 6, 2018 at 11:33 AM UTC
Middle-class, educated, better than all of you. The poet
whines that the people he said were his friends
were his friends. Too eager to stick it to the man, his sentences end
where he pleases.
Not understanding, as his peers are hurt when insulted,
he blames the age to which he was born
of his troubles. He should have been born in the fifties.
Absolutely nothing was wrong with the fifties.
Love is not a safe place. It is not the taste of their name
coughed by the cancerous lung, drowning in overused metaphors.
A lover is not a tool, to take you in and give you everything
they have, to spew a 'better' person next year.
Death is not the endless peace, nor the bliss,
nor the torture nor infinite void. It is the end, no matter
how artistically short you write each line,
and none of it mattered.
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 3:57 PM UTC