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Kelsey Nov 2015
My mother was
a first generation lesbian.
My father,
a first generation divorcee.
His father was the one child
of a public school teacher.
He found my grandmother at 18.
A farm child, one of seven.
A painter, a baker.
My mother's father
a single boy to three sisters.
His aggressive masculinity
kept the line clear and thick.
He found my mother's mother at 17.
A middle of seven Pentecostal children.
A beauty queen, an agoraphobic.
Each had five children.
The door-to-door salesmen/
homemaker and mother of boys duo
bet it all to open a hobby shop.
They were by far the poorest of the
watermelon farming siblings.
They were artists and explorers.
The high school graduate and ladies man,
was a logger before a father.
And the single mother of 25 he left
scarcely left her home at all.
Neither pair made it big.
But they made my father.
A lonely, post middle aged man.
The poorest of his brothers.
A used to be pilot,
and could have been teacher,
a want to be pioneer.
A nuclear family super fan
who never got his way.
And they made my mother.
A nervous, eccentric hippie
who doesn't know how to talk to her siblings.
A woman working her *** off to excel at lower middle class.
A builder, a fighter, a **** good mother.
Even if accidentally so.
She has plans to travel.
He has dreams to live by a lake.
And they made me.
A single girl among three boys.
A quirky, nervous tomboy.
A thinker, a gardener, a climber.
A loser and a dreamer by blood.
Kagey Sage Feb 2016
The entropy of the universe, microcosmic in this house
I can't control everything, I can't make you clean up
your cereal bowl
or stay out of my space
in the garage
I wish for a place
where every little thing has a niche
and every month or so, I get out a cloth
and dust

Maintaining entropy
Keep it at a steady level
Chris Voss Feb 2013
I'm leaving.
Less like, Peace the **** out,
more like, I gotta go.
I'm leaving the way ships are wooed by waves,
under the pretense of more promising continents.

I can see where countless hands have pulled at my shoelaces,
wrapped my arches in ribbons of origami,
left me second guessing how well holes burn through soles.
It's been a long day of finding breathing space between double-knots and bending
broken fingernails back into place;
the self-constrained chaotic embrace of something supposedly so
straight as string brings forth beckoning ghosts of
those figure-eight souls who laid themselves
horizontal
to waste their Sundays tracing the Hills
on the breath fogged side of some painted-shut window sill;
trading the promise of Infinity
for the Religion of Monotony.
Praying through agoraphobic day-dreams
raining across the night sky of their eye lids
with the brilliance of meteorites,
imagining how earth-shattering they could be
if only these tyrannosauruses would just look up.

I have come here;
Less like, conquest
more like, exploration.
--Abandoned the comfort of quaint, suburban
ruins of the American Dream, which buckled
like widows knees mid frail-voiced eulogy
mourning the death of their Salesman--
and wandered aimlessly into the improvisation of some story-book jungle,
wishing I was better rehearsed.

I have come here
to congregate with the snakes and beasts; to feast beneath
the din of carnal sin and primal instincts. I've chosen to begin jumping
from stump-to-stump like stepping headstones
in a graveyard of fallen trees, where men,
                     who grew up too quickly and forgot the importance of pretend,
                     who learned early on how to black-market trade
                              the need to imagine for something a little bit more
                                                      tangib­le,­
                     who, smiling through serrated teeth,
saw it fit to clear this wilderness for something a little bit more
domesticated.

But thank god, these brambles grow so thick!
For every hail Mary their metal tongues would lick
into the trees' skin, a hallelujah of vines and branches and roots
would erupt in confused medley,
and their finest mathematics couldn't begin to calculate
the thriving division of a place so ungoverned by logic.       
In a jungle plucked straight from storybook pages
I'll band together with these untamed brutes
--these feral barbarians and unbroken monstrosities--
to howl at the moon with the effervescence of a Ginsberg poem.
We'll forge a tinsel-town crown and take turns
playing king of Where the Wild Things Are found.

See, unlike concrete cities
The Wild of Atavism has never forgotten that
Tradition is a catalyst for change
and that nothing is permanent.
Hell, I've been having laughing contests with a mountain
because every now-and-again he will crack
A smile, and when a mountain laughs
He does so, so gutturally,
From deep within his catacomb chest that
the whole Earth quakes -- everything shifts--
And I'm not gonna lie to you right now,
I've sort of got my heart set on being a part of something so
significant.

So if you follow,
shipwrecked and mapless,
Keep your shoelaces strapped tight
and run off the infinity of double knots.
If you go looking for me, continue
past the paint chips, through
the open window;
Set your sights to the far treelines.
And don't strain yourself listening for
the laughter of mountains,
Because when that stoic disposition
Finally does crack, you'll feel it in your feet
no matter where you are.
And from the way his ridges are crumbling,
I think I've almost got him beat.
Feb 27, 2013

© Christopher Voss
wanderer Nov 2013
chaste pecks from the super-sonic youth
numb lips flutter to the hollowed cheeks of normality
no longer the hand-prints on the guide book to hostility
a pamphlet of rudimentary teachings;
the principles of tolerance and rebellion and acceptance of human beings
a concoction of suppressed psychotic behavior, quick wit, and center of satirical tease
constantly moving with heavy footsteps and heavier hearts
their minds and bodies plagued with actions from a deserted youth
soul lusting over the naivety of people before self-actualization; how crude
do they call it an existential crisis or the daily life of a agoraphobic nobody
shouts from the depths of caged fears that scrape the oblivious flesh in their brain; a bit gaudy
mother, sister, brother, father how your words crush the knots of comfort that line my internal organs
bleeding from the pores of my screams; streams of moon-beams shooting out my eyes; oh, not again!
stomping our metaphorically spiked toenails against the idealism of pop culture
oh, my, how adolescence is the worst kind of torture
cherry slushies lined with cigarettes to create a whirl-pool of nostalgia
recreational drugs and ironic situations to ease our instinctual sense of proverbial nausea
loud-mouthed demons spawned out of clothes-hangers and emotional turmoil
show up in our nightmares that we nick-name ‘a good place to contemplate suicide’
repeated imagery stacked like flap-jacks in the mouths of blissed-out sociopaths
too self-indulgent to include us in to their personal stories so we can observe, record, and assess
i don’t perceive doctors to be particularly and predominantly just and true
but i one time met a doctor who told me ‘being a teenager is perhaps the hardest thing you could ever do’
The streets are clear, we're hydrophobic
Hoods propped by hats and socks pulled high;
The rain brings peace to the agoraphobic
Puddles form moats and clouds fill the sky.

Splash, droplets hit the window,
chauffeured by the gale outside.
Squint your eyes and flash back
boats tilt starboard, with the tide.

The captain shouts to the decks, paranoid
'Clear the decks and brace for impact'
Without turbulence we are disenfranchised
Boredom becomes us when we're boring.

Shake it off and stare at the dot to dot
the residual carving of water as it slides
Another droplet falls beside it, parallel
it aligns, growling thunder overhead.

Without stirring we are robotic workforces
Without awaking we are left inside
The constructs created for us, by corporate-
conglomerate elitist-psychopaths.

Two drops of water on the window
simmer red with burning anger.
Crash lightening sears the sky
Rage becomes you, girders melt.

The starry night undercurrent, flings
us backwards, never up, as democracies
which seek to serve sink into a sea of
stocks and shares, the wall street journal

sits atop the captains lobby, economies
were meant to tumble as the working classes
fumble for bread, men in suits gaggle
and toast to the millions they left for dead.

Resistance is futile, when eighty-five
of the richest suit owners sit on currency
that was meant for the three point five
billion who aren’t driven by gluttony.
Beaux Oct 2020
I can’t do anything right
I can’t do anything outside
I can’t leave
The voices in my head are screaming
Cover your face, don’t let them see
Cover your face, hide what you are
Mask up, keep it on
Paranoid about my privacy

Days on weeks
On months
On years
Hiding away from the world
They’re always asking
They’re always wondering
They want to know
They speculate

Anxiety attacks
Hands shake
Breath halters
Heart thumps

Don’t let them see
Don’t let them know

Hide away hide away hide away

Don’t show them what you really are
I ******* hate myself
A pace of life.
A metronome is set.
To rush with a crowd.
Or walk alone.
Or in-between.
Resetting the metronome.
There is too much verbal
Hate in this world.
Which results in physical
Hate in this world.
Cause and affect.
The ripple affects afterwards.
With doings that cannot
Physically be undone.
After the fact.
Everyone knows this.
But the people who
Live these damaged lives
Would never wish
It upon anyone.
When everyone knows
The inevitable outcome
Of war is peace.
(or extinction)
Everyone should be intelligent
Enough to never start any.
Every person carries their own
Legacy of lies and
Possible untruths.
To live with unknowing possibilities.
Some structures are ceaselessly
Being formed with needless
Complexities
To barrier communication and
Understanding.
It’s still great to be alive, don’t forget to breathe (air).
A poem written in the mid 2000's from a self published book - 'Poetry from the wilderness years { Or slices of thoughts and emotions :-{}' - I added one edit line today. Background to poem - living in the country side at the time - still abusing drugs and alcohol - nearest village was a mile or two's walk away and i had no transport but that meant the walk to the village was beautiful but then having to jump into 'human active space' after previously just being around mind settling nature used to inspire heightened senses of fear and I could feel my mental state disintegrating often but what can you do but struggle on (or break down and be hospitalised)  - if my memory serves me - in the end I didnt want to leave the house/room I existed within and even my own thoughts of human interaction really frightened me - luckily enough a cousin down the road had a pet dog - Luka - a beautiful animal and I was asked to mind him some evenings/days/nights - I think this was the start of me coming back into 'your normal usual human society' - still now I can reread this and see the hints of my general paranoia to the whole world outside - I still think mental institutions should have organised and 100% supervised animal therapy visits if possible - it would help bring your thoughts out of your own head and into another truely non-judgemental animal form and can definitely ease anguished souls/minds/bodies. Cheers - will try to post a few more poems from this collection over the next few weeks but with hopefully some happier themes (I didnt really write about insanity during this collection because my confidence was in minus figures :-)  )
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
.i'm in luck, they're selling it at under 11 quid right now,
stock dry - gone in an instant - laphroaig like -
but not as smoky - but smoked scotch it it
at £10.34 - oh the little joys of having little money to spend -
you end up less picky and less hoarder and
the junk yard.


na głowe sypano mi, tak popiół:
     popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
           popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
                 popiół! a obiecano mi *****!

                  (not my words... lao che's dym)...

me, beer, cigarette, outer-suburbia -
police whizz past, silent with flare
or screaming toddler and Odysseus' 20 sirens
with wax in the ears of oaring company
akin to Ajax'ς vitality -
along the way, my neighbour (who's mother
killed my cat.. listen, i know he had
heart problems, he was on aspirin -
but kidneys, even if complicated are not
real problem, felines take longer to ****
than do the no. 2, pigeons don't have kidneys -
they're always of an **** diet of diarrhoea;
write like Aristotle sometimes,
forget the facts, be wrong, get it wrong,
never put a glass cup into the waterfall of
poetic cascades - get it wrong, be wrong -
get to know yourself - it's not that dumb
to be predictable in yourself -
if you allow self-predictability you will
see certain social events as being pointless -
you'll see friends and "friends" -
self-predictability is a verb, compounded -
i already know i'll make references to grammar
and it being missing in philosophy -
no, not coherence and appropriate arrangement -
i mean undoing the box of thing-in-itself
and the subsequent tennis with a brick wall,
to surprise yourself when something is unearthed,
a little piece of the puzzle - simulating awe,
the genesis of all that's to come, even awe from a yawn
and boredom... it's here somewhere... i'll karate
catch it with chop sticks.... (looking around)...
i don't know, might be a moth or a fly...

Antichrist: or a summary of Antisemitism - a variant of,
or at least a concentration - mainly confiscated
by Christianity - prime complaint:
a democracy of Anointed One (Messiahs) -
obviously a manifested justifiable practice of Antisemitism -
the throng of Golgotha intelligence quotient -
Jew v. Jew, and one convert from the delusional
4 x 4 (in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy
                                         spirit... hold on!
                                    i make four gestures... and make a fifth
                 with Romeo and Juliet talking -
St. Matthew-Luke-Mark-and-John... penta penta pent-up
pentagon - evidently there's a pentagrammaton somewhere:
ah! i b l i s.                       Surat no. via Rumi - 7:143 - veils and
the one - reward in heaven - more veils, gardens veils,
grapes in heaven veils - stomach a veil - hunger a veil -
rewards in heaven also veils - the poem?
praise be Jesus - and Jason and the Argonauts - and whoever
wanted a strawberry flavoured pastiche to lick tears off -
love's apocalypse, love's glory -
         well bloodhound eyes say it all - droop drool -
droop & drool... Jack & Jill... went up the hill, and passed
the Grimm Bro. baton to Hanzel und Gretyl in the 100m x4
relay of Disney Limps - then rabbinical literature to sober up -
Albotini's Sulam HaAliyah (Ladder of Ascent, formerly Jacob's
ladder - to be: Ladder of Skip-rope; Oxford, hello! yes,
can you please consider un-hyphenating what is desirably
a compound worthy word in the practice of German?          )?
is a bracket necessary anywhere and i missed it?
Antichrist - or a very strange form of antisemitism -
be like a Jew, congregate applauding in the right corner: Jesus -
in the blue corner: Crux Golgothia.
export from Portugal - the said book -
key principle (kefitzah) jumping or skipping (dilug) -
and this being applied to the one practice of mystic Judaism -
the ****** gematria; hishtavut (stoicism) -

me - is it still 20 quid for an eighth?
Sim (my neighbour) - yeah, but these days
                                       they sort of cheat,
                                       you'd get an eighth nibbled on,
                                       twenty for a tenth?!
me - ******, well, we can't expect it to not happen,
         we had coin debasement - clippings of silver
         keratin with Siliqua, third stage and
         all encoded authority is gone: Thomas and Anne
         till death and nail clippings be fraud unison in
         the depart (or when narration extinguishes
         a character, the character is worth nothing -
         the narrator wakes up - all the characters run
         like phantom-hares into nonexistence -
         phantom! thin air!
politeness said: only one **** at the wacky wee ö wee
(umlaut O / double oh, 007 - 00'7 - double u... oh!
                                 i get it!                             Jamie Oliver!)
DEI.GRA.REG.FID.DEF.
   "   (-tia) (-ina)(-ei)(-ensor) -
all that would have been clipped - authority of visage -
the courtesan only knew the mint in silver
and the mint in the flesh - hence clipping of coin
to erase the authority from the holy authority of words -
in the beginning - but once dei.gra.reg.fid.def.jpeg /
                                   dei.gra.red.fid.def.gif.

that ****** moth is here somewhere! there it is! catch it!
                                                             ­   catch it!
SLAM!          and the job is done )                                      ).
i really waiting a bus stop pretending to wait for a bus
toking on a joint - joint is mix tobacco and wee wee
and spliff is pure? i forgot the slang - haven't been
addicted to it in years.
Sim - yeah, that's how it is. work in central london -
         have to get up early in the morning.
         corporate finance - no that's a commercial firm,
         corporate finance - McDonald's, etc.
me - oh cool waiting for  ghost bus - never get paranoid
         then?
(police cars whizz by)
Sim - n'ah, a perfectly decent area, got stopped once,
          three years ago.
and the price goes to the laziest narrator in history - absolutely
no engagement with characters - it's too real, everyone's
lying - this is the second time i spoke to my neighbour properly
in the past.. ooh 2002... 14 YEARS - it's not even funny -
no amount of marijuana will make you feel comfortable -
you can mate and make Kingston handshakes and what not -
this is purity of absurdity and western isolation,
we went against the maxim: no man is an island on purpose,
not by chance like Robinson Crusoe -
at least Crusoe had a talking Friday - we have a ghost
of Michael Faraday on Friday - ******* disco blink blink -
poet... or alt.: the narrator complex - inhibitions toward
character craft and pseudo-schizoid symptom -
believing in ghosts is easy, fiction writers and their ghosts
and abortions, hardly a way to escape from that -
poetry: rebellious narration - just anything with narration,
modern fiction is read like a chess match between deep blue
and Kasparov - or Pavlov v. Jezebel playing gynaecologist.

blank.... blank... wait for the atoms trilled R to make
their toady presence felt -
the more pricier the whiskey the more pristine water,
i.e. you get drunk more easily -
anyone that smokes marijuana and thinks
they're clever are stupid; how many people are out there that are
stupid!
- resounding hearsay-hooray!
drugs, ******, crack, blow, marijuana, ****, ***,
  cannabis, dope, ******, mary-jane, 13, M - herb shake -
Humphrey saying to Bogart - that joint.
as said in Saudi
Arabic - a Ferrari G.T.I. and MeKubalim HaMitbodedim
                  )
                                  -chism - schism - sky - ski -
                                  cha cha, cha cha - kilo or 100th -
                                  1000 thd. - hundredth a thousandth -
                                  - where then the acute,
                                  timber from Czechs -
                                  kebab from Mesopotamia -
                                  and the Trojan horse to boot -
                                 chatter - chopper whopper -
                                 astoikism - not chew off
                                 curve into cherish but
                                 cravat chew in -
                                 Slavic mining zed - czarna
                                 ciasność - blackened claustrophobia.
a Buddhist clap
                   immersion -
left handed the right hand claps against air
                  )             )              )               )            ) ) )            )
a night at the Opera, right handed the left hand claps against air
(                       (        (            (               (          ( ( (            (
scimitar Luna - so they said, would like an audience with the
further unmentioned mention -
you're mates with neighbours who over 14 years you only
spoke to the count of thumb and index on occasion -
and thus necessarily high -
i was going to write something really important before
i finalised this draft... but i forgot what it was...
got almighty this whiskey is good...
i'm smoking salmon and pickling reindeer hooves and antennas;
a bit like practising Chinese miracle medicine with
whale blubber and Mongolian nostril hairs.

it's not about loving your enemies -
this love sinister must be invoked as: making your
enemies bearable.

i'm sure i had something concerning poetry and narration -
ah! it was... poetic compensation -
a.d.h.d. narration - attention deficit hyperactive disorder -
true - all psychiatric terms are metaphors -
at least outside the psychiatric realm -
poetry as a.d.h.d. meaning: shrapnel narration -
a custard pie of missing characters -
poetry: i.e.: the inability to believe in ghosts
or write characters - claustrophobic or agoraphobic narration?
a mix of both - poetry - the inability to conjure
Ouija fancies - poetry, the over-specialised gift for
narration, but an inability to invent characters -
poetry, the truth of the narrative, and the truth of un-invented
characters, poetry: the ability to narrate, coupled
with the inability to create characters -
fiction and the dumb narrator - poetry and the exquisite
narrator - fiction and the exciting characters -
poetry and the God - our focus is based on that vector,
or bias to that vector - fiction and the Oscars -
narrator and director - when to change from first person
to third person - again Burroughs was right -
images 50 years ahead of writing - a bit obvious,
nothing spectacular with that phrase -
lightning and the sons of thunder: 12 of them -
made the tetragrammaton less spoken and swear words
fucken-uppen censored so the crucifix and **** could
collide - a fine fine excuse - the Boeing 747 first
and later the quasi-sonic broom shoo' 'mm -
poetry as fiction disguised when fiction was given
a seance with pure narratives - splinter group:
philosophy's juggling with pronouns esp. the plural deviation
from first person as if to proper punctuation -
psychiatry and the theory of pronoun usage -
poetry and the pronoun rōnin (macron = umlaut -
count to two, or prolong - reasonable man / **** sapiens, pre-noun pro-adjective / adjective attache-noun, noun counter-noun es duo-adjective, Kellogg's sunrise cockle-doodle-dip-in-tartan-chess) -
only poetry mediates the parallel vectors of prose-fiction and philosophy - it consolidates the use of pronouns, art of poetry alone -
pure narration we're talking about,
the narrator and characters of its fancy,
philosopher and dialectical placebos (character equivalence)
with self-conscious moments, mono-pro-noun - alone i name -
the sacred squash wall of lecturing an invisible audience -
rummaging epitaphs in a graveyard along with birth dates
and live by dates - yes, that sacred we philosophers use -
an entire theatre was summoned to continue in appearing
sensible when writing without fictive apparitions -
enabling a fluidity in pronoun use, without sensible letter
writing, as in dear sir,
                                       me in reverse, thank you.
w
b g Apr 2015
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?
dorian green Oct 2019
I am afraid of everyone I know.
I did not evolve with any of you.
It’s a party but I’m
a deer in the headlights,
and I'm trying to have fun,
but I am scared of everyone there.
I got very drunk,
and told a friend that
I didn't trust anybody.
Why did I tell him?
Everyone’s out to get me.
Hm, no, that’s not how it feels;
everyone could be out to get me one day,
and every word out of my mouth
is another knife in their arsenal, or my stomach,
because I am a revolting mass of skin and sinew
and everything is something to hold against me.
I think one day I will be
the ****** that will not leave the house.
It’s like the original “Little Mermaid”,
every step on dry land-
every step out of my home-
is another step of agony,
and one day, when I have had enough
of this miserable existence,
I will turn on the stove
and dissolve into the sea.
RLG Jun 2017
Do you know
What these eyes have seen?
I'm not going out
There.
The bodies lie on
Concrete,
Surrounded by the
Litter of emergency
Repair.
The faces of
Strangers,
Tormented by
Their ventures out
There.
How can you sell
The idea of
Fresh air,
When I've
Seen it exhaled in
Despair?

I am not unified.
Solidarity will
Not protect my throat.
It will not block
A raging car.
Or a backpack
Full of nails.
So, call me:
Agoraphobic.
I'm just
Scared.
Sarina Sep 2013
The last time I was in the room with a ******
flowers speckled my hair,
pink as privates, cloud-white. I considered our honeymoon
and thought about how we loathe
sunshine, but would create our first bed on roses
after I have spent five or more years removing her thorns.

I did not know about clotheslines being used
for more than our damp second skins.

She once described it as a construction zone, being the
property of some government
who does not care if it ruins someone's habitat
to build a brand new home. But I do not know if I can say
the same; a house is your mountain above
all hurt, only you
can jump from the top and make yourself bleed.

There I sat and swung on wooden benches,
my most disturbing thought a wonder of how it could hold
me. The sky was supposedly blue,
just now I cannot remember, colorblind of any
possible plane forming smiling men above our heads.

Sometimes, things are not on the tip of my tongue
but still making their way through my
brain-cells. I wanted to lay down on my stomach for love
be a carpet of hair, unshaven legs, sweat beads
until the clouds showed me handcuffs. My
safe lover, agoraphobic, now I can understand why.

I did not think about blankets being used as
shields, or mattress springs made of barbed wire.

If I had known, I would have eaten
my own hair and thrown up every petal on your doorstep,
their broken flower souls, now warm-blooded.
Got Guanxi Jan 2016
insides dead,
driftwood emotions,
oceans of regret.
swept under the waves.
Betterdays,
in the horizon.
Hard to find them
in the abyss
of bad habits
that i’ve inhabited.
Agoraphobic,
closed off,
like a treacherous day.
Doors locked,
subdued,
constant moods,
brooding storms in submarines,
under the weather
&
under the sea.
show me the coral reef,
of beautful feelings,
and creatures,
the features of life.
Evade me by day,
and escape me at night.
i can’t fathom the colloquial,
of the same old ****.
i’m down with my nothing,
and i’ll sink with the ship.
Tony Tweedy Mar 2019
Outside my door is a world where once I did dwell.
But through my window now I see a living hell.
I moved among that place and the people living there.
But now I cannot enter it without feelings of despair.
I cannot tell to you exactly what changed inside of me.
But I can no longer fit within the shape I used to be.
Did the window I once looked through view another place?
I ponder what I see and note changes to that space.
Outside used to make sense and I joined it with true lust.
But now it holds no value and no truths that I can trust.
Sometimes I have to enter there that place outside my door.
But nothing familiar awaits me there at least nothing that I saw.
The people there can see me and I feel their judging glare.
Always trying to remind me that I am alien when I am there.
When I get home and feel relief by the sealing of my door.
I make a vow to myself not to trespass outside space no more.
With much anxiety transpired through the yessing and the no.
When days have passed and once again to outside I must go.
So difficult to think of outside and I once dwelling there.
Opening doors and passing through seemingly without a care.
Passing through so many times in the blinking of an eye.
Not dithering and putting off as days and days go by.
To relate this sense to you may leave your mouths agape.
But its those things outside that dented me this new shape.
My original draft to create my account on "Hello Poetry". Previously untitled.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
the internet wasn't originally intended as the playground for the young, who have no reason to convince themselves of a need to either dogmatise proper spelling, or proper diacritical-punctuation... hálo humpty-dumpty! utter that hark like a dragon!

i have something more volatile than atoms
to construct an atom bomb and
cite Oppenheimer -
i have letters as atoms, words as minor
twitches, and language as Samael:
the death-breathing harvesting resurrector...
  i call the film *a beautiful mind

a perfect case of a beautiful propaganda
machine that backfired...
  if that mathematician who died "tragically"
in car-crash was anything to go by
with having his negation of ease hijacked,
exemplified, magnified to scare the public,
then Gabriel must have been a really sweet
soothsayer in Muhammad's ear...
   because someone with that kind of imagination
to conjure up people should have never
worked for the emerging C.I.A. or F.B.I.:
but Walt ******* Disney... to be sure of it:
Bukowski run parallels with the story:
staying drunk: to keep up with the sober-imaginative
collective: i would have done the same...
can you believe i've passed the 50h mark
on not sleeping under a self-imposed
example of what's barely a scratch of the
siberian gulags?
                   can you imagine that i...
simply had a fetish for it? imagine being awake for
over 50 hours... and having a nearing-****
audacity to not fall asleep for a minute?
can you imagine the military rigour of such
an endeavour?
   must have been self-taught and therefore, very
much indie: selling to the highest bidder.
oh please don't take my literal Monday's worth
of vocabulary truthfulness on it:
i'll play truant on it:
   i don't have people-friendly devices to keep
up with gossip, the rule is:
you can only go mad once,
you can play double jeopardy with madness...
    talk going mad a second time...
        i'll talk about recreating carnage park
in essex... you know what's scary about
that horror movie? it happens at high-noon...
there's nothing eerie about the night...
with the night i think the solace of death
and the never-ending and the never-shifting queue
of names, dates, and the ultra sensitive invocations
of faking epitaphs, i mean, inscribing things
on graves the people who "own" the graves
never had the capacity to say, in the first place.
but you know what scared me about
the film carnage park? the first horror movie
based upon Hitchcock "resurrected" -
but it was never about it... there's no close-proximity,
you actually see the culprits face...
   the idea being: humanising the man executing
moral justification by tugging the guillotine
or pushing the switch on the electric chair...
it's all about moral ambiguity,
hence the horror is all about daylight,
daylight representing the quasi-assurance of your
own judgement: and could you do the justice
by bypassing all jurisprudence paperwork?
  daylight is important in this movie...
                 nothing is hidden, nothing is romantic,
because the man in question is a ******,
he's not a torturer... the invocation of agoraphobia
is seminal! no... subliminal! Greeks invented little
fears and allowed them to be wedded for magnification
given that theatre is extinct... little phobias
create big budget exploits...
   but this is a first of exploiting agoraphobia...
       and agoraphobia could only be exploited in
high-noon... when i think of night these days
i think of the j. r. r. tolkien romance novels of
what man once had... adventure...
these days? plain talk? tourism.
                            i never could think it could be done:
but apparently is has been done...
           the ever distant voyeurism is also gone...
how can anyone be voyeuristic in an agoraphobic space?
   you're basically knitting and deforming
a large space into a pixel... there's no sadism either,
no loch ness barrage of torture methods,
only what man employes to capture animals...
   it's militarism: solo...
        the true essence of a renegade:
   antidote to indoctrination...
             exemplified by the fact that no matter what
mask you give the horror, the mundaneness of it
doesn't go away: because it's not hidden,
  the placebo horror scenario -
          we fake hiding from it... horror these days
is medicinised by fantasy... which is the abhorrent
quality of our times: over-assurance...
    our times are too self-servient, too self-assured...
too comfortable... we're championing
arrogance, calling our predecessors incompetent
*******... oil on the flames? maybe...
                       we prefer to imagine dragons than
see actual dragons among us...
                       that's why we seem to begin with
congratulating dinosaurs into having begun
   as abstract spines that the serpents of our times are...
us? to our inheritors? brains in pickle jars.
we have already started the process of pickling ourselves
by extracting as much as we could from our being
and encoding it into artificiality...
        anyone with a global invasion tactic can easily
tap into this "economy"... it's not an encyclopedia...
it's an economised unitary model readied for
exploitation for invasion...
       do i share the film's culprit paranoia?
well... i share his defence of environmental study...
but having provided the most adequate striking-point
             with the utmost drama of cyber-warfare debate
and all counters against ourselves...
            would i choose this maniac over a wall st. yuppy?
          what's that... vomito ***** vs. huey & the news?
if only i was paranoid after having watched this
movie... i'd see it spread akin to the bubonic plague...
but it's apathy that's the bubonic plague:
since it's the most effective safety-mechanism virus...
you get that docile look and try to suddenly say huh?
with surprise, but you get a choking sensation
as if you just swallowed a hazelnut.
      people get these fantasies about other evolutionary
lifeforms... it's not ******* c.i.a. crap about
      everyone working for them being called mr. &
mrs. smith... just so they can dodge bullets
   and buy milk at their local supermarket...
                      without being asked for autographs and
selfies... and have you ever seen a film critique engaging
with a character that says very little, and then
hysterically laugh, with a sense of music akin to
playing front 242's album 06:21:03:11 up evil?
      the true test of horror is music... the visuals can
be Marquis de Sade in Disneyland... and no number
of groans will do it... if the music has
         transylvania's chant of the chastity of anti-sodomites
written all over it... you're in for a knee-jerker...
the diabolical thing about this film is that it
has the double-effect whether it's watched at night
or during the day... the first horror movie that
doesn't invoke close contact between predator and
the prey, along with not even making the night
as something orthodoxically necessary to craft
                                      horror thematism.
well... plus it's a testament to existentialism
in the case of the hostage being "unrightfully"
attested in a crime... the existentialist would
simply conjure up: possible bait / excuse and
unwillful thinking necessary for his own
             victimised self-reflecting-counter-via
the reflex-of-against-self-discriminatory-collective-input...
radical­ised into a reflex puritanism:
   abiding by cohort norms was not enough
                for the cohort minimum:
                    pyramidal elevation was necessary,
               and there was no human explanation
beyond certain matters, all else was justified
in the three digressions: diabolical, angelic or genius:
the madness only came when one claimed to
hear instructions from the devil, or from god,
                        or claimed to be a geniusº.
  disregarding the two fabrics of a self,
the one prior and the one post collective-input
    regarding a doctrine needing a "self", an "individual",
nevertheless: but a pawn.

      ºthere's no articulation of god, which is why
we have no article ascribing a definite or an indefinite
nature toward him, which is why paupers reduce this
argument, debase it to the level of pronouns -
the reason why we cite a genius and the devil...
is because only angels have names...
                              even the fallen ones...
           for they have a misnomer of god, as we have
a misnomer for many a good things.
Lydia Oct 2017
When I told my therapist I was doing better, she asked what was working
"It helps to focus on the future," I said.
"And the Benadryl. The Benadryl helps a lot."
And turning the fan on too high, and leaving all the lights on until seconds before I fall asleep
In high school, I performed a poem about a girl telling her therapist about a vision
This doesn't feel like that
When I said somebody else's words, I always felt the anticipation, and the relief,
And the words being held back because you don't want the person who knows you're crazy to think you're crazy
This doctor mirrors me
Echoes the disappointment I feel in myself
I went home and called my mom:
She said it will take awhile to find someone I feel I can trust, and I said
"Yeah, I know,"
As I sat alone in my bedroom in my silent apartment with no friends to call
It's getting late, and I remember what my therapist said about the Benadryl
You can't drown things out by sleeping through them
The side effects shoot through my skull like walking into the same doorframe every morning
I don't usually stay up this late
They sell two brands at my small town drug store
The pharmacist knows me by the way I know exactly what I'm looking for
She said she was worried about me when I came less often
But I had just stopped taking antidepressants
I "didn't need to anymore."
I "had my life planned out."
Now, it's been three days since I did any dishes and three weeks since I've washed my clothes
I've been wearing the same workout shorts and Doctor Who tshirt on all of my little outings for days
I'm drinking lukewarm water from a mug and I'm fascinated by the little rings made by the oil in my chapstick
Some people call it agoraphobic but I call it safe
My therapist asked me if running was helping and I said
"Yes. While I'm sill running."
I learned as a kid that you can't run forever, but God I tried
I once ran until I fell over at the end of a road and had to call my parents for help
(I showed her the bruises)
I only just learned to sleep with my window open
I used to send my friend terrified messages at two in the morning
I don't think he was thoroughly convinced of the utter horror I felt when all he saw was the word "crickets"
But I am an expert Jeopardy player.
My therapist asked if trivia games make me feel better and I said
"No. Because sometimes I get a question wrong and I realize I haven't been working hard enough."
"The only thing I'm really confident of is that I'm not working hard enough"
I wrote that in my diary, after eight hours of classes and six hours of studying
I got dressed up for a dance I didn't go to
I ran out of Benadryl yesterday
So I'm still up a three thirty in the morning but that's alright
My therapist promised I'd be better off without it.
Please comment :)
Ian Beckett Nov 2012
The agoraphobic need to clutter
The empty spaces in
My life with
Needless

&

Endless
Junk is the
Un-relaxing discomfort
In my struggle for a simple life.
Lendon Partain Mar 2013
***** to the percussion of sound.
The harshness devastates all the people around,
That’s what our embodiment occurrences bring.

Violence seduces,
Into the predilection of wounding,
the populace **** your ******* faith.
Be a ******* human!
I am!

We all learn,
Some faster than others,
To belong to,
Like minds.

I tiptoe through the agoraphobic xenophobe,
That is the amoeba of darkness,
That soul eats you called government and falsity.
All things you see are redundancies.
This is about the inhumanity of countries, ***** ****** up. Nationalism kills people.
Sydney Ann Mar 2015
I don't know what's real anymore
The open margins leave me slightly
agoraphobic
I think it's okay for me to not care
I have a lot of moods
I don't know anyone who understands completely
these abilities
will surely cause the loneliness
to **** me
I'm afraid
I need to get it together
trust
believe
confidence
love.
I'd like to see some other measurements-
The ones where humans don't ***** away
Toward the floor; where teeth and skull plates
Aren't widened and flattened into floorboards,
And where the secret grottoes of abbeys
Aren't made silent, by kneeling on cushioned flesh

Where we stretched our eardrums out
To become acoustic ceilings
We left in the smooth, pebbly gossip
As points of interest
To direct the secular gaze upward
Leaving our agoraphobic thoughts
Stranded out there,
Trying to cross that vast expanse
Of white nothingness

The problem of forever
Is that it always ends
Just one octave
Past a plaintive heartbeat

I put on the clothing of monotonous atmospheres
Because there wasn't anything else to wear
And because I like the nice familiarity
Of warm sun, and cooling moon-
All the twilight seasons of sensation,
Of when you could fall eternally,
Knowing that a temperamental universe
Still owned every atom of your being

And Time's scarred fingers endlessly screeching
On the blackboard
Of all your faded significance
DC raw love Nov 2014
thoughts of anxiety
will drive you insane
a life of seclusion
may do the same

the feelings of sickness
you bring upon yourself
loneliness and sadness
with  no places to go

you  want to leave
but you stay inside
afraid of something
so you live by yourself

you'll let no one in
because your scared
you think life is over
and that no one cares

a life with no surroundings
will lead to misery
with pain and forgiveness
you want company

life doesn't seem fair
but you won't give it a chance
never to remember
that you were once bared

you have people that love you
people that care
you're not alone
so please don't be scared
Deneka Raquel Jun 2014
My composure is just illusion.
A mastery to hide the confusion of,
Having to explain my babbling..'
Or why my heart is pounding..
Hands shaking...
Head spinning..
Palms sweating..
Panic attack brimming..
Because.. publicly speaking wasn't meant for me
I suffer from social anxiety,
And it is awkward and agoraphobic.

Call it paranoia
Or insanity.
Or both.
Because it is..

I will never be able to open up like,
"Normal" people do.
Even though I..
Want to..
Tell you,
I love you..
And need you..
And thank you..
But instead I..
Silently write my woes,
Things I wish i could say to,
Family, friends, and foes.
Yea so i have to deal with this everyday. Imagine i have an interview tomorrow, how will I survive?
Kagey Sage Sep 2
I didn’t go out last night, like I was supposed to. Sunday during Labor day weekend, and it’s a return to the long grind on Tuesday for my field. So many unknowns will collapse into certainty in one day, which will impact the rest of my year and beyond. So it goes.

I was supposed to go drink at the bar, an old friend is back off the wagon it seems. Yet, my buddy didn’t let me know it was going down until they were already at the bar. I spent most the day at my parents’ in the countryside and just got home. I was already on my second drink alone, and I sensed they were already farther along than me. Do I really want to drive 15 minutes to nurse 3 beers for 3 hours so I can drive back home? My stomach felt upset, so that was the deciding factor for me.

I let down Chuck Palahniuk in that quote where he says writers need to get out into the world, because nothing happens at home. Yet, I felt like I let myself down all summer by not hunkering down and completing all the esoteric music projects I envisioned. I was too tired to mess with my cables, mics, and computers, so I just picked up my acoustic and played. Sweet ethereal major 7th inversion chords and long forgotten riffs. A couple hours went by.  I played the blues riff from “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones better than I remember. I hit those chords so rhythmically and started to sing. I always thought I did good with **** Jagger’s vocals. I even remembered the second verse. I was right in the middle of it, when I hear my screen door open and some quick slaps on the door. My little dog comes barreling down from upstairs, barking. I look at the clock on the stove. It’s 9:36. I guess some people still need to work on Labor Day. Nevertheless, the city noise ordinance protects me ‘till 10.

I go to my front door and it’s a black abyss, save for a street light showing no one across the street in its feeble glow. I go to my side door, and my driveway and neighbor’s house is equally forlorn. I check the door on the other side of my house, off the bathroom. ****, I left it open to just the screen door. Surely nobody came into my backyard to mess with this door, but maybe it did let too much noise out. Was it the agoraphobic old lady on this side that came to my door? I never even spoke to her before.

Whoever it was, why didn’t they stay to talk to me? I would give you my phone number to make it easier on you if it ever happens again. I checked in the morning again. No note, no nothing. My mind is spinning with unknowns. Was it someone thinking this was the coke dealer’s house next door? Was it kids, checking if my car was unlocked, but then decided on an impromptu prank when they heard my song? Paranoid, I carried my Shillelagh with me the rest of the night.

I caved in, and got quieter. Switched to a tiny guitar tuned in open D, and stopped singing. I still hope they heard me faintly in defiance. I came up with a cool riff and recorded it in my loop pedal. There was a bit of feedback getting it all set up, and I hope they heard that too.



I’m too dense to take hints. Talk to me like a human being, and maybe next time I’ll know it’s you and what you are looking for.
Hannah Elizabeth Jul 2013
evaluating descriptions
of myself and what it means
to have high arches
and elbows that crack.

or angry base ****** expressions.
I don’t look friendy.
or personable
or happy.

what I’ve found is I don’t fit
into a perfectly shaped puzzle piece
hole (that was made for me
to help identify who I am)

I am unidentifiable by choice.

or maybe it's not willingly
but rather an unfortunate truth
I have mistaken as my own decision.

all I really wanted was
someone who fit into
the puzzle with me.

like two nesting birds
that stuff their feathery bodies
into too-tight spaces.
(we don’t fit)

instead I am just one
lonely bird in a too big nest.

my feathers are ruffled
from frantic, panicked waves
of agoraphobic episodes.

this immense space
looks ridiculous
for one body

I can't be the only one who feels so

alone.
suggestions suggestions always welcome
Katherine Paist Nov 2012
I am a warped vinyl’s distorted resonance,
a dedicated outlier, forever unapologetic,
agoraphobic, and inarticulate with little interest
in this downtown hotel lobby overcrowded with
fiction-faced drunks, and their slurred semantics.
You will never really know me because I don’t
know how to explain it, as we’re ascending
in the elevator, as your finger’s falling down
my spine. I said nevermind.

The hotel floors are vertebrae in a backbone
composition where your finger is an elevator
and I am a building, of many hallways, rooms,
and floors but nevermind: we will not be this
way forever as we were never before,
temporary like each story’s stoic attention
to the elevator doors and I don’t know why
you’re listening but finally it’s floor forty seven
where two ladders take us to confront
this ****** up empty city. Of the streets
and the deaf buildings they keep,
the in-betweens where I walk: a phantom-face
bleach body forever wandering
"Of course it tends to make One
paranoid and agoraphobic:
It's illegal as all ****, and yet,
many a People seem to enjoy It,
some actively seeking It out.

And thus, I find I must
inquire, experiment, and discover
just what the **** else it is
One might expect It to uncover."
What is "it"?
Who knows?!
Matthew James Aug 2016
Nothing's left but it's alright

Have a voice
Give an opinion
Express yourself
Lay yourself bare

I'll tell you a story of a boy
His family are farmers - conservatives
At the bottom of the lane, the pub used to burn a cross on bonfire night. It held the letters KWW - Keep Waterside White
His Grandma is agoraphobic, xenophobic and racist who told him in no uncertain terms not to marry a black girl
Before he passed away, his grandad would shoot at people searching for magic mushrooms on their land
His father liked Thatcher, criticised the miners and the unions and was a casual homophobe
His mother judges women by appearance and thinks Nigel Farage is a decent bloke. Her place is in the home.
His brother works for the police
His sister rides horses
One uncle is a millionaire and CEO
The other believes that mental illness does not exist and its treatment is dangerous
The boy is christened, confirmed, went to an all white, Christian primary school and predominantly white, Christian secondary school.
He left secondary school and college with no qualifications through the arts. Only the important subjects.

There is another story about this boy but for now we will look only at these facts.

It may create an image in your mind

It would be easy to condemn this story
Sure enough it was condemned
By those who held the moral right
Opinions stronger than people
The boy grew fearful of people
Tried to hide his story
Became silent
Shut off from the world
Thought of the ways he could end the pain
Sought to become a different person
To deny his past
Outwardly this worked
Inwardly...

People believed the moral of the story was that he had overcome
They missed the point

Inwardly... Sometimes, the majority ... Can feel like the minority

If I said all of that, could I still express myself?
Would you listen?
Or would I be condemned?
unnamed Apr 2017
Do you ever wonder about the stone that was first tossed,
that left the shards and fragments,
and the wires all uncrossed?

Or do you count the seconds,
the painful ticks and tocks
until my chalkboard-scratching voice
stops hitting your ears like jagged rocks.

A soul with many places to go,
who would ever have the mind
to entertain the meltdown of a child locked in time?
I'm sorry that I came off appearing to be just fine,
A luscious blooming fruit
With the taste of a bitter lime.

Peace from all the madness,
That's what anyone would seek.
Peace from a childish, damaged, wild, shameful, unhinged freak.
Craving love but unable to normally express,
That all i ever wanted was a passionate caress

Instead the message blows away in gusts of words unspoken
Who would want to touch something
So sharp, coarse, and broken?
The world at my fingertips
But I choose to stay inside
Agoraphobic nature, and my instinct is to hide

Why should l expect anyone to sympathize or pity?
There are so many among us whose lives are far from pretty.
But everyone with a brain inside
Has some unspoken pain inside.
Mine reenacts the shame inside;
A torturous symphony.

I can't expect you to understand
I know you're sick and tired
You deserve to be a king and rule your own empire.
Unbound by restrictive wires
and diminishing desires

But before the sight of me causes you to roll your eyes and sigh,
I hope you will consider a bit more than meets the eye.

I may be broken fragments now,
but I hold onto a shred of hope
that one day my shattered glass
will make a great kaleidoscope

I hope in the end you decide not to cut the rope.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
oh i can turn into a mean *******, just give me an adrenaline shot of bile to get me the berserker's worth of intro... the notion of troll is old... you're having to ask an orc, how quickly the mirror visage can change, how ugly, how narcissus can suddenly realise he's no more than: a dorian gray.*

just wondering, i hear it from time to time:
once upon a time on the internet,
or? once upon a time in "real" life...
who are these people?!

real life and internet life?

when was the last time you shopped on
a conventional 20th century high street?!
me? i'm guessing the year,
i don't even remember what year it was...

so... what's the difference between
living via the internet, and living without
it?
   is it really a matrix day-dream?
you seriously fold your napkins,
and envision a candlelight affair beyond
staging a supper, ms. bucket...
no, the vicar already stressed:
it's not bouquet!

               you either sink, or swim...
darwinism can be so regressive at times,
esp. when it come to translating it into
humanism...
  and how horrid it becomes,
and how cruel and how:
parasites feed off the down syndrome
         easy prey...
         seems darwinism hasn't calculated
something into its cold rationalism,
the reality of the human endeavour...
the argument is perfect, i have to admit,
but put into practice? it's hardly there!

   unless you live in iceland,
and have this ingenious app.
that allows you to match up with a future
mate, and distinguish whether there's
a clear genetic correlation that makes
you cousins, twice removed,
  and awaiting the orangutan (down
syndrome similis) -
        what? i thought we were being frank
about these matters...

real life & "the internet": i really hate these
people:
the internet is already life -
once upon a time there was a high-street...
there was once upon a time a travel
agency...
   personally i find no desire to spend
my saturdays on a high street,
thank you internet!
  you have managed to create a hybrid
of agoraphobia mingled with
   claustrophobia...
    tell it to the freaks, they're like:
how the **** can you even become
agoraphobic with the size of the universe
being unsizeable?

i really don't understand people who treat
the internet and "real" life
as worthy of a dichotomy...
   it's utterly bewildering...
   these people are probably the same people
that tune into "reality" t.v.,
   procrastination junkies...
     i don't know why, but at the same time
i know why i hate these types of people...
most of their shopping is done online,
and yet they have the audacity to claim:
whatever happens online does not translate
into "real" life... tell that to the girls
who committed suicide,
  because of the ****-in-wuss antics
of trolls... teen girls who encountered
trolls, but never met an orc...
         actually?! these sort of people
who can't integrate internet economics and
misunderstand social media as
communism 2.0, aren't these the perfect
examples of the exposed anonymity of trolls?
Anna Ray May 2017
Deep blue water, clear enough to see silhouettes of fish hundreds of feet below, cold water lapping into your kayak

Gold leaf pressed to the face of a figure of Buddha, flakes overlapping on his forehead.

Chubby little legs, wobbling and then plopping over on the bed, a slight ache in your arms as small fingers wrap around your thumbs, and you pull him back up.

Ears throbbing as your heartbeat speeds up to match the pace of Keep Breathing at an Ingred Michaelson Concert

An agoraphobic woman, hunched over her clunky walker, wide eyes searching as she shuffles into a crowded chapel to take her sacraments
Arlene Corwin Dec 2020
Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson

Bass stands against a wall.
A singing, dear, expensive bass
Unused and tall,
Its agoraphobic player on a chair he calls his ‘throne’,
Alone, with daily cigarettes,
Watching TV, living in, on the touring pasts.
Half understanding - just half understanding
How great and talented he was.
Perfect recall, perfect pitch
All he broods about is what he’s done -
What was attained long, long, long, gone.

Life’s contradictions:
Great gifts. great restrictions.
One feels the ache of disappointment:
Talent that resigns from life with that great depot of accomplishment,
Finely filed on disc and film.
Not to be bettered, that bass with its singing-ness.
Like men of genius gifts and neuroses,
Ron’s bass was divine, a mine of nuances,
Shades, silken tones, harmonies endless.
That sensitive ear!  What chords he would hear!
Phrases he’d play on!
A multi-boxed crayon.
He could pluck, he could bow .
Did his intellect know why, what, how?
He just did it!

The box of wine, that pack of smokes.
The emails, phone calls, stockpile of anecdotes;
Remembered peers, recalled remarks,
The names of tunes leaving their marK;
The taste and technique, the recall
Combined, his all.

Yet all that one can say
Is that one of the ‘chosen few’
A treasured, master jazz bass player
Lived his last day
On a Thursday, 3rd December, 2020.

Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson 12.9.2020 Vaguely About Music II; Birth, Death & In Between III; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Nover Corwin

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