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My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.
The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
It is not mine. Do not accept it.

Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
Do not accept it. It is not genuine.

A ring of gold with the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.

Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
Cauldron, talking and crackling

All to itself on the top of each
Of nine black Alps.

A disturbance in mirrors,
The sea shattering its grey one ----

Love, love, my season.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
48 hours fasting with only
beer to sustain me,
waking at 1am and quasi-dreaming
eating food for the past two nights...
armed with a bottle of whiskey...
tonight will be a feast to remember!
raw herring in sour cream sauce
made more so sour / piquant with gherkins
and granny smith apples:
now imagine the salivating effect this
might have on an empty stomach -
i might as well be thinking of drinking acetum
(acetic acid / white vinegar), to ensure
my stomach doesn't over-bulge from
the shrinking as byproduct of fasting...
acetic acid coupled
with hydrochloric acid in the stomach...
two acids, a bit of food... warring tribes of
acidity to ensure pleasant digestion.
Crimsyy Jan 2017
Acetic Acid*

Your effect rapid,
I'm contaminated, coated
in your acetic acid.
You have taught me
to just dip my feet,
not throw my body 
into the void
because the void does not 
always respond lovingly.

You have taught me
I love you is a trapdoor
too many fall in,
I love you is a romantic knife
with teeth,
illuminated by moonlit nights.

And most importantly,
your damage taught me
rapture and love
are *not the same.
Anoushka B Aug 2015
You were the forests
birds fled through your *******

you enclose oceans
the earth
the skies

i was just an acetic star
shards of light fled me as i burned
faded
as they disgraced my body

not even the scintillations could linger my soul


i was contained within you
i was only a wave in your vast ocean

i was only a splinter in the earth

only a scintilla in your vast skies

Now Im pushing up daisies in the same wind

Buried beneath the hurricanes
which i would once call gusts

tornadoes which i used to breathe in
now rise from me
now
as i lay dying
my baby left me and all i could make of it at 2 am was poetry
Hannah Payne Dec 2016
I remember the weight of his body
Towering over me,
Ensnaring the torn mesh of my skin,
Concealing the crevices he's embedded me in.

The mass of his force,
That spark traveling through his velocity,
Littering my ability,
To resist and penetrate the vein of impalpable pleasure.

He keeps it contained,
At the bottom of the river,
Beneath the hidden plain,
Of his repressed, departed soul.

Acetic fizzed, frothing exhale,
Pirouetting through my nose.
Its toxicity starts to unfold,
And he wants me to recognize  
The power of his redundant trickery
Engraved in his smirking bloodshot eye.
JP Goss Sep 2013
I’ve been watching for some time
From afar the deep and low valley
Watching the leaves fall
Of what hope they can rally
For not ray nor beam
Nor excitement I seek
Only the bejeweled recluse with the golden hair
The blue eyes and tongue abounding, yet meek
A beauty not to sever
From the mountains of my youth
Against all attempt
My failed past endeavor
To bring those impartial arms closer to my own
But, alas, she proved far too clever
And escaped, perpetually I bemoan
And where you took leave
Still spurns the suture
Dark blood freshly drawn
I bleed for another, though soul turned to pewter
And I stumble weakly like invalid fawn
The gauze did atone
Anesthetized my brooding
Until the reclaimed throne
Did sanctify its queen
Too little, too late
A penance not paid
Impatience could at surface readily sate
And showed me in acetic recollection
My folly not to wait
But, escaped your grace, my grubby hands though groped
And words did not flow forth as I had hoped
Simple gesture; a wave or two
And the separation broadened again, same as the first time I left you
But, I’ve been watching for some time
The creeks and the crags
Knowing the leaves will always return
And the fawn thus wanes to mighty stag
In hopes for a band of our own from the pitch of time discerned
I fashioned this life for you
And encircled you in my mind
That what persona I do beget
I was just hoping for you to find
A poor choice for but one of many
An ill-conceived and hasty plan
All done for you, my beauty
Planning for a future
Before it even began
And now, after I’ve waited for what feels like millennia
These clipped wings refuse to span
And this valley wracks me with mania
Spirits sink with the sun
Ink drips from the vein
Turn to verse written in vain,
Smears through the valleys
Like eloquent stains
An escape from memory, dazzling and dun
But the valley vast, maw is wide
Too far, too unwilling to outrun
The Beautiful, the flitting
Inescapable Morgan.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
on today's menu? a leek and granny smith apple salad (crème fraîche instead of mayonnaise, a bit of lemon juice and a bit of sugar, salt and pepper of course; diced tomatoes with onion, white vinegar / an acetic acid concoction, salt and pepper; cucumbers and tomatoes with onions likewise as the diced tomatoes extras; mashed potatoes with a dash of milk and crème fraîche and dill; and of course, the pièce de résistance - a slowly fried schnitzel (dabbled in a sprinkle of plain flower, egg, and breadcrumbs); apropos, don't you find middle-class english people slightly paranoid about using white vinegar as if they've seen a martian? i've seen it, what a comedy, with one line the entire theatrical play played out, and nothing was said, just eye contact!*

actually the only fun i have from
certain bad palette recipes
is throwing raw meat to my cats,
beef is met with full approval,
pork too, chicken not so much,
prawns are approved, even a fish
eye; indeed if i'm working on a dish
from inexperience reciting each
ingredient into the cauldron i never
know what to expect, and if the dish
is written by a badly experienced palette,
throwing raw meat to my cats
is the most enjoyable part of cooking,
it almost feels like a scene from
a coliseum.
Dave Robertson Dec 2021
Hearts are funny things
I feel mine rise and fall, jarred
like captured summer fruit
fat in syrup
some days
others, pickled sharp
and tucked away in acetic darkness
Crimsyy Jan 2017
Acetic Acid*

Did you darken my skin?
Have you erased
any traces of light within?
You turned heartless,

I became lifeless,
all that life inside my bones
wasted in all the minutes
my analog clock ticked,

Proving to me you were never
going to keep your promises,
and it wasn't a matter of time.

I know now it was not
the fear of failure that kept you
from trying.
It was the fear of responsibility,
for you could never take any.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2021
sodium hypochlorite + <5% anionic surfactant (not stated, ammonium lauryl sulfate?)

even i thought that my chemistry days were long gone...
as ever... a chance experiment...
hell... i almost passed out since the scent of
the chemical reaction was so strong...
why on earth did i pour some sodium hypochlorite
into the shower cubicle...
subsequently... some descaling agent...
an acid... whatever it might have been...
acetic, diluted hydrochloric...
then again: it might have been <5% anionic surfactant
believe you me... i've heard of sniffing
glue... but this stuff... knocked me right
back... a citric saltiness so overpowering
i could have gagged... i pretty much did...
here's one for exploring new territories...
all in all: a salt-
               mixed with an acid...
i'm pretty sure there's a specific alkaline +
acid reaction: then again... i don't remember:
my Faustian days have passed in dealing
with chemicals...
nonetheless: a strange sort of high...
by chance: like L.S.D. or champagne...
i'm guessing... what got me off my rockers
was... chlorine gas...
i'll need to refresh my studies
concerning what happens when you mix
an alkaline substance with an acid:
well... bleach isn't exactly alkaline: chlorine-based...
errrr... let's see...
sodium hypochlorite +   what "genre" of surfactant?
NaOCl                                hell: the chemical company
     or NaOH...                     stated <5% anionic...
   both...                
                                          
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02635807

******* amateur... who? moi!
oh hell... spilled wine on my beard...
a dizzying high: i suppose if the shower cubicle was
much smaller...
i'd be puking... who the hell thinks it necessary
to mix up bleach with a descaling agent?
probably just me...

thank god i don't think myself a genius...
i have had friends who thought just as much...
no brains behind: this is no Zyklone
no mustard gas:
come to think of it...
there were still pagans in Europe
circa 1412... in Lithuania:
while Muslims of the Ottoman Empire
remains were slaughtered by fanatical
Christian Serbs as late at the mid 1990s...

joys concerning the noble savage:
come to think... i'm backtracking...
i've become the most ignoble citizen...
it's not odd that attending a Catholic high school
they didn't teach us to code...
but i did read a load of Gnostic texts...
feel guilty first:
well... i walked around with
a t-shirt with the phrase:
******* IS NOT A CRIME
on the odd day when she coughed up
a quid to not wear uniform...

and all those incentives to fulfil the self-
(prefix attachment, careless)
with an affix akin to: -realisation...
"-ambition"...
can we truly generate: and keep it up...
for this... solipsistic placebo pill?
how staggering that i want to belong:
living in England while not being English...
while the English football team managed
the impossible of beating the Germans
for a span of years: dry for over 50?
my father asked...
why are they so competitive...
why not be competitive with the Spaniards...
or the French?
i guess it boils down to...
that... ahem... "miracle"...
during world war I... when British soldiers
played a game of football
with the Kaiser Crew on Christmas Day
in Belgian mud...

a day later they went back to the trenches
and aimed: the dead-shot
for the old Empires...
at least the 2nd World War makes sense to me:
the mythological evil of the Nazis...
such evil so well attired...

but i don't think that original football match
between British soldiers and the Kaiser Crew
on Christmas day had a specific name...
it probably did... ****... i was hoping noun-spectacular:
the christmas truce match...

that's why this relentless competition
between the English team and the Germans is so felt...
after all: the English rather remember the first world war
than the 2nd... ******* it on their island...
while ****** pilots took part in dogfights...
the old imperial powers came to the end of
their longevity... so... they turned on themselves
to flex their muscles...
it might have the status of a world war:
but it was most certainly the ugliest war...

good to know: that cleaning my own bathroom
doesn't require me to pay third party involvement...
it's not below me: thank god...
it's probably beside me...
if rewriting all those medieval fantasies
of being the sword bearer...
i'll be the inn-keeper...
i'll take most gratification in cooking some...
prawns with chorizo with linguini
in a spicy... tomato sauce...
that's me... i kind of like this advent of peace...
the world can happen and be what it is...

like today: i watched how U-KRA-I-NA
somehow managed to beat Sweden to reach
the quarter-finals...
i was jealous of the chad...
oh i'm sure there are plenty Ukrainian girls
readied for the saddle...
be bothered... be bothered...
sure... i'll be bothered:
sights of virgins?
give me 72 rottweilers...
and all the ****** you can manage in between:
i rather pay for what i the money allows...
i don't need pretences... lies...
faking it...
                  
   every time i feed into a little trickle of jealousy...
i'm reminded by a...
single thread of cobweb that covers my eyes...
when i walk into the garden for some ice...
always this single thread of cobweb
that's always aimed at my eyes...
how often does something have to become
plain: before it becomes this: blatantly
obvious...
                there's no Wittgenstein to mind
the tautology i just leveraged...

should i feel effeminate(d) cleaning my own
bathroom? i'm no actor... model a tourist of
the visage... but i want to live in a clean house...
where cats also occupy the same space...
i need a sterile environment to breathe in...
this is... somehow... a feminine trait?
primo! *******!
  i like a clean house because:
i like a clean house... however pedantic it comes
across..

even if i tried: by rhyme alone...
this was never going to be a revisionist take
on the divine comedy...
how many bad ideas have survived...
it's not "we" don't welcome them into the confines
of the dodo-project...

for the love of cooking:
or rather... not undercooking potatoes
for a salad... i had one of these...
over-cooking pasta that made a man...
deservedly abandon the woman
and eat take-away...
over-cooked pasta: let's... just...
eat... raw.... carrots... parsnips...
there are no obligations:
but there are also no obligations
for 3rd party resources
to cook **** for you!

               the saying goes:
the most impressive footballer in the world...
but he can't: can't he?
make his own...
carbonara? well then... the most impressive
footballer he is: finite specialisations
of "competence"...

i can't compete...
mundane moi: if i were only allowed to do one
thing proper...
but i haven't: therefore i wouldn't...
it bugs me though:
a little trickle of jealousy and i'm reminded...
by a single thread of cobweb
in the garden that somehow covers my eyes....

it's hard to think beside the already arrived at...
this immovable object...
with thinking reaching fantasies
of telekinesis... etc.
there's no potential... there's just this...
wall of sinew.
Alemseged Sisay Mar 2020
Love is two molecule of hydrogen plus an oxygen,
We slake it, when we truly love the one.
With some acidity,
for its being healthy.

I mean the acetic one,
CH3COOH for better digestion.
It circulates through our blood,
for strength, iron is needed.

but slightly to be denser,
approximately 3 to 4 times more,
viscous than water.

One third hemoglobin,
Plasma 92% H2O plus protein,
and gasses: Oxygen, CO2, and Nitrogen.

It is Fathomless composite,
therefore we can't derivative,
a best chemical formula for it.

March 02, 2020.
Alemseged Sisay W.
Written for AP Contest

— The End —