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Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
this will make sense in the end, or at least along the way... a modern version of the Ruben's judgement of Paris, although if you watch the debate, the mediator already insinuates the "confusion": to my left or to my right, ha ha, left to right, right to left, 1st 3rd 2nd... that's putting it mildly, if i were Paris i'd have given the apple of knowing to Hera, queen of the goddesses... naomi wolf... beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and your phallus in the hand of... mhmm... softer than the flesh of an oyster at the end of the day... they did say once in times just after Pericles: make my inner as beautiful as my outer, and my outer as beautiful as my inner... then take art as not representing images: or the "shallow" arguments... any man would have given the apple to the intellectual Aphrodite (karen straughan)... we all know that antigone darling is Athena: who speaks so little you start to equate wisdom to be a distant synonym of needing courage to engage with a plebiscite crowd... oh don't give that prize to her: she'll probably tongue-tie herself and will never be able to speak into a microphone, the intellectual Aphrodite knows all too well the conundrum... it's the cougar attired in crimson that fuels the whole debate... she doesn't need to have inner beauty, you phallus is already shouting 'sir! yes sir!' at the drill sergeant anyways... you take Aphrodite as a paradoxical beauty, namely that of long conversations and not long interludes of ******* and baking cookies... you'll leave Aphrodite confused... i once heard an English motto: don't take for a wife a woman that's too attractive... that wasn't intended to be within the bias of intellect, i mean a beautiful woman within the bias of being able to manage a harem of 72 male virgins... well **** yeah, artists leave clues, whether knowing or unknowing... they're working from triangles, poets end up writing from Δ, they obscure textures and antonyms of what appears to be monochromatic, we say: red, crimson, burgundy in x-ray confines... the point being: there's no intellectual debate to be had with someone representative metaphorically or not of Hera... you can't have a Parisian fashion week catwalk where you find dehydrated beauty on the outside and an anorexic ego on the inside... what you find in Hera is a volume (voluptuousness) on the inside, within which there's a leech libido that transgresses all demands for intellect... unless it's pistons-well-oiled orientated... please, read some Marquis... if you get an ******* having read a few of his works: you're qualified - or as i like to call it: neo-classical *******... ever masturbated over Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time? well, if you haven't i guess **** ******* and gang-banging is your outlet: mine are pictures of Aria Giovanni and Chloe Vevraire (googlewhack no. 3!): Chloe Vevrier... but if you're never done the Odysseus pokes fun at Polyphemus... yep: the ghost hand: nobody!


you know, you can cram a lot into a 30 hour "day",
which results in the complete erosion
for the capacity to dream afterwards,
to actually work from the unconscious and create
a subconscious medium vector that connects
to points of consciousness: 30+ hours awake,
however many hours asleep, and then awake again
for another 30+ "day" to digest...
the classical definition of the subconscious, in theory,
is that you get plenty of sleep,
and it's a bit like that schematic A x B (algebraic)
A knows x     and B knows x...
   something mutual acknowledgment
via the same schematic but
A knows x, B knows x,
A knows that B knows x,
A knows that B knows that A knows x,
   which is all very Aristotelian to be frank,
it's this hyperlogic of having to acquire
great technological feats and reduce such
complexities to cat-videos on the internet as
the Egyptian partake in the genius that actually
made it possible... the slogan goes
Moses, you fool! said Nefertiti...
    so B knows x and knows that A knows x
and knows that A knows that B knows x
and B knows it's not necessarily anywhere
alphabetically less, even though the French said
a, b, c... which was very imperial of them,
that's the imperial version of what the mathematical
imperialism proved with the English inches, miles
and furlongs... but in this French case of imperialism
it wasn't a e i o u, b c d f g h j...
            that's what 30 hours awake does to you,
you wouldn't think of alcohol as a party drink,
a social barrier deconstruct... after 30 hours
you're hoping to meet Vladimir Klitschko on your
way to bed... aye pleasing Cossack, give us a
smacker goodnight... one glove it filled with
whiskey, the other with naproxen and amitriptyline...
boom! k.o. snooze, baby:
you gotta love buddhist honesty...
at least you get to see the bright side of life...
  and if people start thinking that Kant was the harbinger
of ill fate... you obviously haven't met a necromancer...
it was only von Kleist for ****'s sake!
       and he had the American option of a suicide
pact with a terminally ill woman and a bullet from
a pistol in a ditch... you can't get more romantic than that...
and there i was, mid-afternoon, having done a few of
the household chores: the washing, the ironing and
cooking a two-course meal while my mother did
the taxes (seems only mothers understand their sons
these days... women my age?
   ever see David Attenborough describe Emperor
penguins? money was invented for women,
because it brokered the end of the brotherhood of man,
we became famished by feminine needs
and have reduced inherent sports in us (hunting)
to sledgehammer bashing entertainment...
i'm the "drunk" that would rather watch ten hours
worth of ping-pong that tennis...
    i don't know why they resurrect the Olympics
every four years, have a **** coverage of it anyway
and then go back to that Glaswegian diet
of deep-fried pizza and haggis... and i hope to never know,
maybe Sepp Blatter knows...
but that's 30 hours of being awake, and only not
able to relax, by writing...
                 you wouldn't see this sort of "abuse" of
alcohol anywhere in the world...
the Soviet sleep experiment is actually not that silly...
too much sleep can also make you feel the minutes
upon your wake as if you've been stung by a bee...
three of my all time favourite songs?
the stone roses'* i wanna be adored,
    chromatics' cherry,
and finally: i can be forgiven for having missed this,
i got into them seriously with the album aufheben
and didn't really move anywhere else,
the dandy warhol effect got me...
but this song out of obscurity, 20th century technology
translated into mp3 and then onto c.d. and then
back into mp3... a song from an album that doesn't
even appear on their discography...
the brian jonestown massacre's pol ***'s pleasure penthouse,
the song in question? fingertips.
so there's that three...
      but **** on me, i half expected android (2015)
to be like ex_machina (whatever year that was)...
same topic... what the difference between android
cyborg and robot?
                                  aren't robots the proper a.i.?
as in: in production, the thing that's not hand-crafted
is artificially crafted, because it is crafted to a large yield
of a product? isn't that so? i can't distinguish (as of yet)
the difference between android and cyborg, i guess
as a Latin man (a - z user) i have to condescend the Grecian
pompousness of demeaning Hebrews (original anti-semitism
originated in Greece, not Rome, the Romans gave
the Jews not elaborate architectural schemes to abide by
in honour of Octavian, but the supposed pride in Greek
thought, undermined what later science would provide
a Latin man with, given the translation of יחֵוָחֵ,
indeed variables... i once wrote a piece about
the two Adams... namely how אָ (alef)
and עַ (ayin) are prominent letters among consonants,
but no vowel kindred of Eve is equal...
or how Eve is covered in both mainstream Islam
and orthodox Judaism... and Christianity is
a Rastafarian dream for more jerky reggae reggae...
they never sing down with Rome, judgement upon
Rome... they always sing about Babylon...
well, polytheistic or poly-schismatic,
it's all Hindu from hereon in - apart from that
here's a very tiny heresy... is that yod he vav he
or is it yod he vav het?
         there is a difference, afterall:
he (ה)        and het (חֵ) obviously differ... oh!
xet!                   god this garden is a mess,
               i guess the fruit of knowing good from evil
was intended to say: till the land, deforest,
learn agriculture... that's good, the **** you do to each
other... well: that's hardly a tonne of grain...
but they so alike though, even when you apply a noun
to these two symbols!
  could have said he xet but instead it's known as he het:
no wonder the Hittites came along for a curious look...
mind you, had not a prominent Roman, a centurion,
asked for help... we'd be prudish in runic from the northern
invaders... so thankfully no one within the Roman confines
of encoding sounds didn't have the bright spark idea
of looking at the very tiny little island of Israel and that
four lettered word and how it became known
to say o = omicron, ε = epsilon and γ = gamma,
   and cutting those things apart leaving only letter
having done plastic surgery on the noun that denotes the
letter that's denoted by the symbol, rearranged it
and got the idea of εγo: ****** marvellous!
- this is not brian pallenberg's story about the pleasure
penthouse album...
but you know what really got me in those 30 hours:
day, night, day, night: a NHLF debate between
naomi wolf, karen straughan & antigone darling,
the part where karen makes the point that
once upon a time men who beat their wives
in Scotland were publicly whipped (dhaal,
straugan), and if they were beaten-up instead by
their wives, a plebiscite of good-wishers would turn up
at the house and apply the Freudian theory of
a castration to the man, bang pots and pans,
and then in public display him having to ride on a
donkey backwards, having to hold the donkey's tail
for stability...
     see that woman in red in that debate? a true political
man-eating beast of ***** readied in atom bomb
explosions... the one next to her isn't wearing any tights...
unconsciously you're thinking: i like her french freestyle
of not having shaved her legs... the smart one is wearing
jeans and she looks oh so desperate to get out...
    the discussion doesn't even enter the realm of ideas...
hen-picking is discussed... all poetry ascribed to language
is gone... is it politically correct to ascribe the sexuality
of female chickens with the word hen to women?
behind me in Blackpool stag-dos (dos? no does...
there isn't even a ******* spelling for that phrase...
hen-nights and the inflatable Juan)...
well obviously your mind is working out why you'd
**** the middle 'un right away... she doesn't say divorcee
which is so "unsexy" but say she's a mum twice,
a mum, a single mum... polly wants a *******...
her address is new york city? ******! i'm heading there,
right now! can a white guy use urban colloquial
in the suburbs on a piece of pixel paper, which he claims
is mere the cartesian extension of his thought
and disinterest in rhetorical skills? i hope so...
it's not like herr adolf wrote a disclaimer saying:
read this or a thousand volts up your ****!
that really was a constipated debate, plus the red was all
provocateur and peppered with "you know",
   and "i know absolutely nothing": there were no ideas
in the debate! whenever there was a chance to debate
ideas, the debate turned into a debated about words,
and what words to use: to simply brush aside any clinching
to a idea-debate... perhaps because feminism is
an ideology without any coherency of ideas, as stated
from the debate: a coherency of wording: and that better
be hen = an asexual chicken, rooster = an asexual chicken...
it's still a chicken kiev at the end of the day.
now? i might squeeze in another poem...
     but it would still be great to get any kind of analysis
comparing the movie android and ex_machina...
the only problem would be: both creators are men...
so that's gender-stereotyping already...
but hell! she gets to build a buggie that she directs with
a laser pen... so that's nice...
but i'd love a discussion on these two films,
given that the music in both films is very oomph!
thriller genre always had better music than horror...
horror music is too romantic... thriller music?
***** back-stabbing you whenever you think you're
going to get a comfortable 10 minute slot...
but it's there... aside from both robotic creators being male...
woman: ex_machina - out of the machinery of man
          ergo? deus, or woman as...
i actually have a problem with the word android...
the woman is a factor of playing the two men against
each other... the android actually find a mechanical
part of himself in the way the "human" talks to the woman,
while the "android" is prejudiced against the rigidity
of his ****** movement: unlike the "human" having
an intellectual rigidity... the woman plays the two against
each other... well, 30 hours no sleep...
  i'm doing the helter-skelter trying to throw ideas
by way of remembering the actual plot of the film...
this obviously adds nothing to the discussion:
meaning i probably gave away a "spoiler" -
but more the point, i need a refill and some fresh air
to breath, having farted into a leather chair for the past
hour.
Niesha Radovanic Aug 2017
do you know what it's like to have a pit in your heart? i can feel it right now i can hear gymnopiede playing in the back ground filling me with a sanity but not enough remember what Rupi said " it was when i stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself i found there are no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole" but instead i fall in love w the little things that i mold into big things to make myself feel important. when people see that i'm stressed and deprived of sleep and love i feel significant to their daily lives.
i want to be the rose in the garden that everyone wants to tend so they can revive the gold medal for the best green thumb. i want to be the bookmark of every bibliophile on the planet but little do they know that rose wants to die that's rose has thorns inside poking her every hope. rose hopes for love but not just any love. rose hopes that a dandelion will come who will be intelligent enough to pull the thorns out and so beautiful she will gasp for another breath just to see their petals. on weekends rose absorbs enough sunlight to get up for work. she tends to the clothing at the retail stop at the local mall and as she folds the endless piles of destroyed denim she admires the many flowers that tend to one another.she can smell the scent of the flickering candles upstairs and she makes her way up to the candle shop on her break she never sets foot inside, she worries the flicker of the flame will catch her petals. rose doesn't want to be alone when it happens she wants a dandelion to come and save her from the flame she wants dandelion to roar as loud as he can and blow the flame out. and be there ready to sweep rose off her stem. rose wants everyone to be happy she try's her hardest to make sure her garden has enough light and water and that everyone's petals aren't frowning. rose has tried too hard she ends up being the loneliness one her garden. she returns to her shop after break she goes back to folding the same endless pile of denim and she admires the buttercup walking with the california poppy looking at the lights hanging from the ceiling. the dutch iris and the crocus intertwining their petals. honesty and honeysuckle are pursing the petals together under the mistletoe. rose gathers her tools and makes her way to her wheel barrow parked by the restrauants she passes the children frolicking in the lot and she catches the heart beat of excitement of the little girl who's eyes are glued to the ipad that is playing alice and wonderland and rose can hear the garden scene and she cringes and feels like she's been swallowed by a world who doesn't know what passion is. rose wonders where the little girls mother is and she catches her mother sitting on the lap of the magnolia and she longs to be a mother but a mother who watches alice in wonderland with her child and frolics with her kids in the parking lot but pays attention to the cars coming just in case her motherly instincts have to kick in.
rose returns to her garden and flips thru the channels hoping to find a romance movie on. rose does this to her self. she absorbs her self into all the love she can get because deep downside she fears she will never find her dandelion. rose finds her self drowning in an ocean of tears. she crys out to the garden are my petals not light enough? is my stem to thick?. rose wants to dig herself a grave and burry herself there with the fake petals of a dandelion so that one day when the walkers in the cemetery hear the clanking of her stem crying out for love they will dig her up and see how much she coveted the love of a dandelion and they will find the real petals and place them next to her.  rose will tear honey because that's the sweetest thing she knows she will wipe her tears and lick the honey off of her petals. rose doesn't want to hide in her sunken city of petals she wants to tell you who she is. hello i am rose.
i've been trying to get rid of the file cabinets in my brain that i have been organized alphabetically. A- aster i love you and i promise your prayers for a new kidney will be granted. B- bleeding heart i want you to know i will drive you in wheel barrow to the hospital so you
can be sewed up. C- carnation please don't fret the world loves you and im so sorry you have a price tag that will eventually be ripped off when the children at the elementary school down the street buy you on february 14th just know that you're so much more to me than a valentine's day gift. D- daffodil you're too precious to feel unwanted your lover will come soon.i can hear the crys of them but please go back to the bed and sleep. i'm able to open my pedals up and hear the weeping of a dandelion "thank you for being there for them and just know i've been hear all along, rose. you're tired i can tell by the wrinkles of your palms please promise me rose that you will baptize yourself into the ocean of love that you keep drowning in. " rose pulls the dead roots that are pinning her down in her grave and gasps for another breath to see dandelion before the roots come back from under and tug her back down she is able to string her broken english together and whisper " dandelion i already have"
SH Dec 2011
poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul

it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.

if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.

as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.

and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.

yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.

then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.

if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.
It began with how I thought poetry exactly similar to photography. But as I tried to write on how poetry is like photography, I began to realise... it isn't. Photography captures the external world. Poetry captures the internal world - even if the subject is an external one.

"We see the world as we are, not as it is." - Mahatma Ghandi
drumhound May 2014
It was hard to miss Jerry
in the corner
holding court
over the bran muffin.
Flurries of judgement and wisdom
flying across coffee dappled pages
as he sentenced a large cup of
Paruvian Dark Roast
to be ******.

7 am Dan never flinched
steeling his tenured chair at
a spot one section of stir sticks away
calculably just out of reach
of the regularly scheduled tantrum.

An auburn-haired newbie
fanes camoflage
peeking over two pages of Obituaries
she never intended to read.
Her raised and nearly detached eyebrows
hover above the dateline like a magic trick.

And on every table fall
scattered leaves
of press print trees
unsorted and littered with intent
by careless absorbers of trivia.

Disconnected
ear-budded
footnotes of humanity
see nothing
hear nothing
using the disarrayed World News as
enormous coasters
unmoved by hyper-ventilating compulsives
pushing panic buttons through
desperate quests to uncover
one alphabetically organized set
of local news.

Of the papers not strewn
the remnant holds anxious
on a distant wall
a throng of flopping
rabbit-eared
step children
dangling precariously
from unaccomodating magazine racks
like smoky orphans from
windows in a fiery building.
Disordered.
Disrespected.
Discarded...words are
Jews in the holocaust.

Death of a voice.
We are irreverent in our silence
diminishing genius through apathy
put off by the imposition to be challenged
choosing disposable principles
above responsible knowledge.
Everything is disposable - cameras, cars,
relationships, loyalty, babies...and wisdom -
crumpling Pulitzer prize authors
and discarding WW2 veterans
just to get to the cartoons.
phantasmal Aug 2013
a for the anxiety that burns in my heart
b for the brutality of your words
c for the chances you never take
d for every door you kept close
e for the efforts i've wasted on you
f for the freedom we locked up in cages
g for the gardens that grow weeds
h for the hands that grasp at hope
i for the illusions of this world
j for the jars we keep our hearts in
k for the kisses you pressed to my jaw
l for the laundry you left on my floor
m for the memories that refuse to fade
n for the nostalgia that haunts my dreams
o for the onslaught of grayest rain
p for the parachutes we forgot when we jumped
q for the questions that don't have answers
r for the rebels in us who will never die
s for the satellites we resemble too much
t for the trains we could never catch up
u for the umbrellas that are broken and torn
v for the vengeance we shouldn't seek
w for the winters that never end
x for the false Xs they drew on maps
y for the years that pass like days

and

z for zilch interest, the interest you never had in me

- - -
Rhianecdote Apr 2015
Time to hand the deck back
Before Alice in Wonderland
Becomes Malice in Blunderland
The looking glass cracks
And there's no passage back.

Sat at Life's table
Night after Night goes aRound
And you're Unable to leave.
Coulda drawn the Ace
But got sidetracked by the Joker
With your Inability
to pass up possibility
And it Leaves you looking in the mirror
At this fool that you see
The fool that you are
As you fall so easily
For this game
Who's only aim
Is to breed
losers to please
Those who have already won
With ease
Been Established for centuries
And now you're indebted
to this Society.

It Leaves you
Staring At the innocent face
You strive to disgrace
Even though it hurts you
And The sincerity
aids in your
Despair at he
That puts Gold before Good
Though it makes sense
Alphabetically
He who wages happiness
On the back of money
Will eventually sight
Looking glass Or not
*That the price is not right.
I look at our Society and how it just encourages and perpetuates the wrong type of gambling and risk taking in life and it makes me sick.
abecedarian May 2020
~for r, just because~


put her in my mouth and she became my
mouth.

put myself inside her and she became my
insides out.

spill good words on her belly, licked & laced us together, then came my 
poetry.


on elbow, she claimed coauthor-ship, demanded her name above        
          mine.



I smiled, answering most matter-of-factly,
surely they’re your creations, you-a-ruler, procreator, foremost, first,

the ABCedarian

the muse goddess of alphabets, all that is poetic divine mistress to
thousands

I’m mortal,
your transcriber, copyist, alphabetically seconded, merest mere,

the ABEcedarian

I’m rudimentary without you, lost midst the masses o’poets nameless.

She snorted, said
“sounds like poetic ******* to me”
*
but returned to her sleepy heaven,
mumbling most contentedly.
ABECEDARIAN (noun)
a person who is learning the letters of the alphabet.
a rudimentary beginner in any field of learning.
Matt Shao Jun 2019
M. E. Shao

An Ode to the Letter “A”

A picture says a thousand words
At least that’s what they say
Although they can’t describe a thing
As well as the letter “A”
 
“A” means that there’s others
As if there’s two or three
And if there was just only one
“A” would become “the”
 
An Ode to the Letter “B”

Behold! A letter that can be
Better than numbers one and three
Because it sits quite neighborly
Between it’s buddies A & C
 
Boldly standing faithfully
Barely used the same you see
Bugs will spell it differently
But one less E and then it’s be
 
An Ode to the Letter “C”

Can you guess what letters next
Clocking in at number three?
Careful how you use it now
‘Cause it confuses frequently
 
Certain times it’s overlooked, like
Chief – the “I” before the “E”
Can’t use “I” that same way though when
Coming after “C”
 
An Ode to the Letter “D”

Dare I try letter four
Daunting as it may be?
Duly note this verse might prove as
Drab and dull as me
 
Don’t say there’s other letters of such
Deep complexity
Desire to speak in a past tense?
Dread not! Just add a “D”
 
And Ode to the Letter “E”

Ere I forget I said I’d commit
Ever mindful I shall be, and
Execute my promise, my Oath
Elegantly thanking thee
 
Eyes see so much wisdom
Ears hear so much glee
Every single word of love
Ends, with letter “E”
 
An Ode to the Letter “F”

Finally a letter without a long E
For those are easy to rhyme
Frankly it’s fun to come up with a pun
Fresh from out of the mind
 
Forever I wonder, over and under
From bottom to top, all the time
For a bold new way to come out and say
F this…but with no moral fine
 
An Ode to the Letter “G”

Goodness gracious, golly G!
Gifted writers inspire me
Gernsback, Goddard, de Graffigny
Grouped in glory’s category
 
Guiding words with paper and pen
Grandeur achieved by all of them
God bestowed them minds of gold
Goals to emulate when I’m old
 
An Ode to the Letter “H”

Heavens hopeful, but all should know
Hell awaits for heathens below
Havoc, hatred, halls of stones
Heated seats on hopeless thrones
 
Helping mortals foster love
Hoping for the gates above
Hearts are kind for constant fear
Horror and nightmare might be near
 
An Ode to the Letter “I”

I love the vowels for how they serve
In bridging letters, creating words
Insanity comes, ’cause if not for them
Illegible messes that none comprehend
 
Idle time attempting to read
It’s pointless were it not for these
Irked by consonants, throw in the towel
If you want a word…just buy a vowel
 
An Ode to the Letter “J”

Jack and Jill went up the hill
Jogging straight up and down
Joking and playing, having a thrill
Joy till he broke his crown
 
Jumping in fear, Jill looked around
Jolting across the way
Jeering, she returned and scooped him up
Jill’s stick was shaped like a J
 
An Ode to the Letter “K”

Knobbed in darkness, twisted wood
Knuckled as can be
Kinks and dead spots all around
Knotted is the tree
 
Kindling yes, our God will need, as its
Key for making day
Kind, He brightens nights with knights by simply adding
K
 
An Ode to the Letter “L”

Little, little, did I know
L is oh so great
Like the time I drank that wine and
Lulled a pretty mate
 
Lords and ladies, boys and girls
Like all, must pay the well
Lay respect to that which lets us
Love – the letter “L”
 
An Ode to the Letter “M”

Middle of the alphabet
Molded like a gem
Most will say there’s nothing worth
More than Letter “M”
 
Maybe M hates W
Malice with a frown
Mercilessly mocked by him when
M is upside down
 
An Ode to the Letter “N”

Naughty naughty little N
Never helping me
Nothing useful ever comes from
Negativity
 
No and never, none and nor
N is oh so rude
Neighbors M and O must want to
Nix that attitude
 
An Ode to the Letter “O”
Over, under, bottom, top
Odes to letters never stop
On the day I get to Z
Old and wrinkled, I may be
 
Or young and youthful, hopefully
Only time will tell, you see
Our lives are short, we need to grind
Otherwise we’re wasting time
 
An Ode to the Letter “P”

Paper, pencil, pen and ink, in
Prose I’ve grown to speak and think
Public platforms, message boards
Poetic guide of rhythmic chords
 
Poems are pretty, I think it naught
Pretentious such as some have thought
Pious I shan’t think it so
Poetry shall help me grow
 
An Ode to the Letter “Q”

Quiet! I must concentrate
Q is hard to satiate
Quarrels make me want to quit
Quirks in words which don’t quite fit
 
Quorum comes when all are here
Quickly now, our quest is near
Quantify a love for two
Q is married, to the U
 
An Ode to the Letter “R”

Regal existence, loved from afar
Reality dictates we need Letter R
Rigid and rugged it’s straight and it’s curved
Reading is easy when Rs are preserved

Rallying troops or driving a car?
Really won’t work without Letter R
Reason without one, your point is moot
R runs the game, expect the boot
 
An Ode to the Letter “S”

Supposed vision we are told will
Save the world today
Sorry if I disagree
So many told to stay
 
Spite and harm are currently
Sawing through the way
Someday hope for peace and love
So hate will go away
 
An Ode to the Letter “T”

There never was a letter
That can do as much as me
Think about it really hard and
Thank me when you see
 
The other letters hate me
Though, because of jealousy
They say it’s not fair that I rhyme
That super easily
 
An Ode to the Letter “U”

Usually I’d try her number
Unfortunately my hearts asunder
Used to love her, used to hold
Useless now, attempts are cold
 
Until things change for now I’ll be
Under this cloak of melancholy
Urging progress, longing for more
Unable to close the heart wrenching door
 
An Ode to the Letter “V”

Very strong, vivaciously
Voltage high, tenaciously
Veer this verse, voraciously
Vaulting over prose you see
 
Violence in these words you read
Viking frame of mind have we
Vibrant in philosophy
Verbiage is our currency
 
An Ode to the Letter “W”

Well, here we are
Woe is me!
Winding down, finally
Wrapping up this poetry
 
We’re almost done, from A to Z
Writing alphabetically
Won’t be long, but wait! We’re not free
W was easy….X will not be
 
An Ode to the Letter “X”

X can mark the spot I see
Xanax needed this entry
Xi is Greek, it’s fourteen
Xeroxed words, all randomly
 
Xystus too, as I mentioned Greece
Xebecs sailing open seas
Xerosis I suffer cerebrally
Xenial X was not to me
 
An Ode to the Letter “Y”

You may think these odes of mine
Yawn-inducing, wastes of time
Yet I attest validity
Yes they’re written passionately
 
Yesterday I couldn’t show it
Younger me was not a poet
Yearn for greatness, one day bestow it
Years from now, I hope you know it
 
An Ode to the Letter “Z”

Zealots desired to bless my soul
Zilch is my energy left
Zoned out, these odes have taken their toll
Zoo in my mind, though ’twas deft
 
Zip up this project, my brain can now rest
Zero letters now lie ahead
Zephyrs now soothe me, caressing my chest
Zodiac today – time for bed
Nihl Jun 2013
CHAPTER II

At once I was spat out into a familiar space, although still swimming in darkness. As I slowly adjusted to the dark, I realized I was sitting in my room at home. I was surrounded by large, vacant, white walls and a sturdy black bedside table. Crested on top of the sturdy black table was the same familiar dodgy lamp that never seemed to work particularly well. My whole world was spinning as I sat up in my bed, scanning the room for outlines and shapes to ensure I was in fact back home. Back home and not caught in another hellish fantasy.
My bed linen had been kicked off my bed during what I imagined was another nightmarish spasm, leaving me drenched in cold sweat and shivering. I lifted my hand to my brow to quickly swipe away some of the salted perspiration that had gathered in the corner of my eye.
I spread my hands out beside me, feeling the bed beneath me to ground myself.
I wasn't in danger, I was safe, I had to keep telling myself that it was just a dream to try and stay sane.
-
I picked myself off the bed until I was standing upright in the center of the room, still surveying every nook and space, places where things could hide. Nothing, there was nothing in this room but me, standing in the room sweating and spinning around like a madman. I pulled on a shirt and went to the bathroom. White tiles, a shower, toilet and sink. Everything in there was normal and safe. I was relieved, switching on the light as I entered. I stood in front of the mirror gazing into my reflection, I was older and I wasn't surprised. The events of the nightmare had actually happened, not five minutes ago but six years ago. And ever since then, this nightmare had been somewhat of a regular occurrence. Recently however, it has been getting worse, more lucid, every time, closer.
-
My father did in fact vanish six years ago, police found me cowering in the cabin three days afterwards, bruised, cut up and mumbling, they only came looking because dad stopped turning up to work without warning. And after the events of that night I’d struggled somewhat to maintain a normal life, having my parents stripped from me at sixteen. Growing up in foster care was hard; my foster parents were kind enough. But the system moved me around a lot, making school very hard to commit to.
-
Looking in the mirror I saw myself staring back, eyes slightly reddened and itchy, and my skin dry and flaky. I turned a faucet and splashed my face with some cold water, ice cold from sitting in the taps in the dead of the night. The cool was extremely grounding, it felt sharp and real. The nightmare had faded to shadows of thought, I felt human again. Quickly drying my face with a clean hand towel and moving back to my room. The room didn't feel so sinister now, probably because I was getting so used to these nightmares. I climbed back into bed, glancing the time on my alarm clock before getting under the covers. 3:25 Am. I moaned at the image, 3:25 Am means four and half hours until I had to go to work. Another disrupted sleep meant another day at work where I was in a state zombification. I turned off the dodgy lamp, instantly flooding the room with darkness once more, Only, I don't remember turning the lamp on. ‘Don't be an idiot’, I thought, before rolling over and falling into a quick, shallow sleep.
-
The next morning I got up, showered, brushed my teeth as usual and caught the express bus to work. I stood in front of 'Bayside Books', my place of employment. I enjoyed it there; it wasn't too demanding and paid for my rent and whatever little I ate. It was a warm little shop that stood unique amongst its surroundings, tall concrete hives of advertising and production on every side. ‘Bayside Books’ was little mahogany box on the bottom floor of some non-descript scraper.
-
As I entered the bookstore the greeting bell chimed, filling the shop with simple song. Just as the bell stopped a rotund man with a sky blue button down shirt almost bursting at the seams, emerged from behind a bookshelf.
“Coulter!” he called cheerfully, “Coulter! You’re late buddy, miss the bus?”
He asked harmlessly, now standing before me with an armful of old books. Assorted popular horror books like ‘Dracula’, ‘Frankenstein’ among some more obscure works I’d never seen.
“I slept through my alarm, I’m sorry Mr. Dupas.” I replied.
-
Mr. Dupas was a large man, although not much taller than me, he was far wider.
Dark, greasy, curly hair seemingly glued onto the top of his round head. Protruding cheeks and a chin that was almost just a button perched in front of a larger chin. He maintained an interesting standard of hygiene, fresh pressed clothes on an almost un-showered man. Perhaps he was just an extremely perspiring person, but I didn't have the courage to ask any time soon.
-
I did sleep through my alarm that morning. I didn't exactly have a habit of getting into work late, but it seemed that with all the sleep I had been losing and the fact I hadn't been blessed with a full nights rest for two weeks now. It was really starting to catch up to me.
-
“Don’t worry about it, happens to the best of us” He smiled.
Mr. Dupas moved behind the shop counter just beside the doorway, piling the stack of books into a small, neat cardboard box on the counter. I could see clearly scrawled on its side in block letters, ‘TO CLIFFORD’. I removed my thick black coat and hung it behind the desk squeezing past Mr. Dupas as I did. Dupas grabbed his coffee mug and drew it to his lips as he moved towards the back of the shop, taking a large gulp of his almost noxiously caffeinated drink.
“Put away the new arrivals then clean the shelves and when you get a chance, go take that box to Clifford!” He called from behind several bookcases. “The invoice for the box is in the second drawer!” as he followed I could hear each stride in his voice.
-
I spent most of the morning stacking the newly arrived books onto the ‘New Release’ shelves. The same old crime stories, successful underdog sportspersons biography and feel goods. I finished putting them in their respective places before quickly dusting the shelves. At about noon I’d finished my jobs, grabbed the cardboard box from atop the counter and hurried out the door, letting Mr. Dupas know that I’d gone.
-
‘Clifford’s’ was only a short walk from ‘Bayside Books’ and it was a journey to and from the store I’d have to make at least twice in any normal week. Mr. Dupas and Mr. Clifford had a little partnership, Dupas would send the odd box of all the supernatural, paranormal, grim dark stories, biographies and spell books of such to Mr. Clifford, where Clifford would pay a paltry price for these books that had been left unsold and gathering dust at ‘Bayside Books’.
-
As I made my way down the street towards ‘Clifford’s, I spotted a few people watching a news report as it was broadcasted through the gaps between security bars, guarding the window of a small electronics store. The images displayed across the several monitors within were of soldier, armored vehicles and unruly citizens in some nondescript middle-eastern country. American flags burning in the middle of busy streets, and giant dolls with paper heads that from a distance, looked uncannily like our American president. The only difference being, that the life-size doll on the monitor seemed as if it was created by an angry eight-year-old student as some twisted school project.
-
I passed the electronic store a ways down the street until I arrived in front of the familiar poorly-lit arcade. Neatly nested at entrance to the arcade was the dark and foreboding storefront. A wood paneled exterior, crowned with five large dusty windows, inside each window stood displays of everything creepy you could imagine, voodoo dolls, satanic bibles, pendants, candles,  statues of vague deities, dried pelts and skulls, and indistinguishable skins and teeth. Not to mention the books, there were hundreds of books. Unlike at ‘Bayside, where our books were categorized and organized by alphabetically author. These books were stacked and scattered in no inherent order. Every now and then I'd spot a group of vampire stories in close proximity and then the order would be disturbed by the odd ‘Cooking: How to prepare human flesh. ‘ followed by the uncommon Serial killer biography. This store, this little jewel of the unnatural and the unfathomable, this was ‘Clifford’s’’
-
‘Clifford’s’ Collectibles; oddities and curiosities.’

N.H.
Robert Zanfad Oct 2013
it's another autumn
migrating geese bark like dogs in distant clouds
marking their journey for earthbound creatures;
tree-crowns browning in rust
frame liquid skies neither of us reached,
though, our younger selves tried

from shelves of every Beatles' album ever made
organized alphabetically by noon after a vetted maid left;
we imagined rock stars strumming guitars,
turning our godawful poems into even worse lyrics
to make us feel important
in hungry aftermaths of disappointments

five star dinners cloistered within the entourage
of strongmen your father sheltered;
they would close restaurants for us
he spoke hushes of business from a stead at the head of table,
and broke men like you,
ordering salads made only from tender hearts of lettuce,
the rest set on plates of those less demanding

I remember blinking away teenaged intoxication like fever,
a world without rules for behavior,
a sixty mile drive to buy Italian hoagies in Atlantic City after midnight
because there was no one to deny an urge
to bend night to daylight; they reopened business for the son...
you knew they had no choice...

you showed me how to climb to my second story window once home again
leaving me hanging from the sill 'till Mom woke to let me in -
mind spinning, mumbling my drunkenness -
goodfellas never worry over consequences
she thought she hated you then,
I learned a measure of self-assurance

but there, in a too-small pup tent
you bought one summer by the sea
to work a job flipping burgers at the boardwalk for money
otherwise spent like water at the public shower
you bathed in

to be near any nagging mother
who set out an extra plate at dinner, because she secretly loved you, too
to be close to broke, dangling brothers like me
I felt the poverty of family

this morning I found the black suit and shoes in back of the closet-
abandoned search for lost yarmulkes that lived among mated socks
and wondered when my shadow disappeared
so many agos, this beard gray, time a dead skin I live in today

we'll lower a set of mortal remains into yet another Gethsemane -
under the cemetery canopy,
covering a carpet-rimmed hole still moist with yesterday's rain
I'll see the blue tent you sheltered in that season at the beach
feel closeness again as if there were no
intervening ocean of living between

there will be neither memorial service nor repast, after ...
only this
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
as space sufficiently expresses, or succinctly paraphrases with the concerns for time: or hue, or suntan, or baritone hummed weakening into a humph... crazy-bone etc.; sometimes poetry is so much more than the usurping of onomatopoeia... life is the essence of being timed, but that's hardly the essence in the space we occupy - over-versed thinking never formalised toward an outer-reaching imagination that might become copper-raindrops' worth of Disney, or a way memory is made adaptive to cure dementia... yes, space is the essential component for the compartment of life... i believe time has no place in what's to be called life, i believe time exists, but on an Olympic scale, in the metres and millimetres, on the minutes and seconds scales... space is the essence of life: so diverging from known apparatus to unknown operations, thus so diverging from known operations to unknown apparatus... and so on and so forth, until dinosaurs roar and we merely say: yawn - arrogant in our guise.

true, space devalues time; as said the people between us who we never had a meal with, but had the crazed look of craving an unnecessary contentment with despair. can i guess at something? i like your alphabetical onomatopoeia, i.e. pun for knocking, a sorta p p p / b b b, not necessarily needing the suffix for rhyme, why is it that poetry requires the echo, why not rhyme upfront? anyway... but it's there, that alphabetical onomatopoeia... a repeating of the first letter, like opening an oyster... which contradicts the orthodox methodology of rhyme... meaning that there's a repeated seance of an opening... which (although alphabetically staged to a prevailing repeat) equips the reader with many more surprising alternations - basically you begin with what rhymes alphabetically, but not necessarily phonetically: the lost suffix -ing via i had a cat called blinding, and he said all things were shining...  one of your poems enabled me to spot this reversal of poetic orthodoxy, in that the rhyme became less musicological, and more rubric enlisting a coherent schema, such as a list... or rhyme via propped first, and cascading into oblivion, never really minding the waggling tail of a bouncy-ball of accepted verse. aardvark and acupuncture... the rhyme begins with A, and ends as it should end, diverging, so there's no feel for a repeat akin to drum or rhythmic bass... otherwise: shout an A into a cave and hear an echo... that's what poetry is damnably worthy to congest one's thinking with... don't rhyme: echo! and ensure that echo is alphabetical rather than musicological. perchance lessened talk, i too would have revised this example with some worthy emoticon.
Sal Gelles Jul 2014
i was alpha,
creating the beauty
set before my own eyes,
built with my own hands;
it was the beginning.

i fell to omega,
destroying my beauty,
not by my own hands,
but those of men in time;
it was then the end.
Odd Odyssey Poet Apr 2022
A for anybody; for any of you reading
into my heart. Try correct the spelling.

B for beginning; to any great story I’m
soon to tell. I hope to get your understanding.

C for seasons; oh for life’s many moments
comes with change. All reshaping.

D for decisions; mostly the critical ones
I make in a day. I do so after praying.

E for eating; especially when I’m in a such
a bad mood. Who doesn’t love eating?

F for effort; so fit to do even in the hardest
of all situations. Just keep pushing!

G for ginger; sweet and bitter at times
while trying to be polite. People are testing.

H for eish; a word I often say under a lot
of daily stress. The closest I am to swearing.

I for iron; cause life’s a pressing matter
of sorts. And close to *******.

J for Jane; I couldn’t think of a clever word
but I’d most likely crush on one. Just saying.

K for Kassan; I wouldn’t be one shying away
from loving himself. I’m quite impressing.

L for l-plate; cause I’m still learning this
race to truly love. There’s no point rushing.

M for meh; not much for me to really say
when it comes to it. Just keep it moving.

N for anything; that tickles your fancy
on happiness. Just keep on smiling.

O for oh; of all the many realizations in
this beautiful life. So mesmerising.

P for pea; not the liquid if your mind
leaks. It wasn’t a vegetable I was fond of eating.

Q for cue; maybe as the time for me to
leave, or stick in the line. Cameras always rolling.

R for are; being asked if you are ready or
you are not. Especially if it’s something daring.

S for especially; mostly in the times my points
are right. No need correcting.

T for tedious; I’m not a fan of repeating myself
too many times. Are you listening?

U for euphoria; I’ve never been the happiest
to use that word. But I’m still trying.

V for victorious; and of the vision to
see my successes far ahead. I keep on dreaming.

W for double you; seems a bit to easy
but I’d wish to have a double of you. Talking about loving.

X for excellent; as of when I write something
that fills me with joy. So exciting!

Y for why; for a curious mind hungry
for wisdom, and spirituality. I long for reasoning.

Z for zeal; the cause is done when it finally
meets it’s end. Finally granted the best finishing.
C C Feb 2015
Getting rid of facebook was like getting rid of a virtual cemetery that I felt compelled to visit,
leaving flowers to dead relationships by liking a photo or poking someone who you haven’t spoken to in person for years.
Like people, some relationships are meant to have died.
Facebook doesn’t allow for those dead relationships to Rot,
the smell lingers for years in the corridors of your daily life;
its like every one you’ve ever come in to contact has been embalmed and is being stored alphabetically in your computer.
Ottar Aug 2013
Seren-dip-me-pity,               (she was self-accepting failure,  bad luck wannabe, wears black and sniffles)
the ardent opposite
of Seren-dip-i-ty,       (she was an accidental discovery, no recovery needed, awe, found objects, in the     
                                                                                    moment)
they are part of the
seven sisters Seren,

wherein lies the rub
Saran-wrap, was third           (caught up on herself, clean and air tight, fresh as the day, tough like teflon)
in line, (changed the spelling of the family name - to be sooner alphabetically)
Seren-ate,                         (she sings she dances, she eats, she sings some more, she waits for applause)
does not speak or gesticulate
unless she performs in song.
Seren-ade, used to sing well           (jealous, performance orientated, sometime for love, lately for money)
as well but when the other came
along and did it better she got bitter
and moved in to retail sales        (lemonADE, pomADE, calvacADE of arcADEs, you get it,                                                                  ­                                                      everything ­became a parADE)
And as for the twins who
are always fighting Seren-ity    (lacks calmness, lacks peace, wants a piece of you, uneven temper)
Seren-e                                         (more easy to be obscene, like evening air with a heavy chill, not bright).

The seven sisters of Seren,
who were always preparing
for a fight to the right to
the next beau to knock
on the door, but soon they
all stopped calling,
they were
no longer falling,
over one another,
as the Seren-ities
were now old biddies,
no longer remained a
worth-while dowry, befitting
sitting silently as the seven
sisters of Seren squabbled
soiling the solitude of the soul.
I stepped out of the box, not sure where I am, have not made home if you see me wave, and point me West or East where ever it is I yam.
Ted Scheck May 2013
I'm halfway to
A hundred
And I still don't
Know
Why
My soul was
Wound So
Tightly

Wound
Ed
Ted
Ted!
My teacher fought
Against the forces
Imagined, imagination-
-AL
Forces that swept the
Thin gossamer web-
Strand of
FOCUS!
Away.
I ****** awake to
Laughter, the
Unsatisfying kind of
Snickers,
Guffaws,
Kids just trying to survive
Childhood.
"I'm sorry,"
I half-sobbed,
"Would you please
Repeat the question?
I wasn't paying
Attention."
Kindness, sometimes, from
The beetled-brow
Of the series of
Stressed-out adults
Who had the distinct pleasure
Of having Teddy Scheck
Way down there on their
Class list.
Most often it was stern
Consternation. Irritation.
Sometimes, anger.
Shame is anything that
Makes you feel smaller
Than you really are.

Classrooms are battlefields.
Bullies are armies,
And I was at their un-
Mercy.

And time, which seemed to
Hold the infinite expanse
Of its boundless breath,
Exhaled slowly, the squeaky-
Balloon hiss of air escaping
A too-tight orifice.

And I'm swimming in the
Miasma of confusion, self-
Loathing, desperation, and
The incredibly strong urge
To dig for green gold
In my own nose.
Yep.
Welcome to my childhood.

Meanwhile,
OUT IN THE HALL...
Water/bathroom break.
Alphabetically, having "S"
Put me toward the end of the line,
But not "Zemichael" or
"Young, Rachel,"
or "David Woods"
And Dave Woods, whose
Eyes wandered behind
Coke-bottle glasses, and
Who whistled when he said
His 'Ws' was a kid
I could really relate to.
He got bullied 4th.
I was 3rd-most.
Two effeminate boys,
Scott and Mike,
Who played with dolls
With the girls, twirled
Jump ropes and chanted
Chants and had
High voices, and couldn't
Kick at all,
They got picked on an
Unfathomable measure
More than I did,
Although, strangely, they
Seemed much better equipped
To deal with it, or
Ignore it, or
(I don't know)
(And this killed me,
It really did)
When,
I took it all in my heart,
And head, and stomach,
And elbows, and picked
Nose, and bitten-off
Warts in 1st grade, and countless
Accidents and injuries and
Scrapes and bruises
By the plethora,
So that by 9:00 that night,
I was sobbing beneath
My pillow, trying
Not to make noise
In a household of 10.
And Mom, my sweet
Mom, would take me in
Her arms, and say
The most confusingly
Comforting words in
The whole wide world.
"I'm sorry, Teddy,"
She would cry, holding
Me so tightly I knew that
If lightning struck, or
A tornado blew in from
Kansas, no force on
Earth would seperate me
From my Mom's loving
Embrace.
"My sweet, wonderful,
Imaginative, creative,
Funny child,"
She would whisper, the
Only balm to sooth
The cuts from prissy girls'
Tongues that made
Me bunch my fists and
Run away in anger,
Or sometimes lash out
In fury;
The knuckle-rubs from
That ******* Randy, the
Class **** and class
Bully.
Mom's words of
Affirmation healed
The slashes and punctures
And lashes from the
Tongues and eyes and lips
And patience and compassion
Run dry like a well that
Has died of thirst.

But boy, did I have a
Whopping
Imagination.
I went to where
My dreams were stored
During the day.
And put them on
Like phantasmagorical
Clothes.

I rode my bike
Everywhere.
I took off my clothes
And swam in farm ponds.
I chased leopard frogs,
Ate questionable foods/plants;
And swung higher on
The swing than anybody
Else.
I was happy at times.
I could imitate just
About any sound
(Real or imagined).
I did the voices
From cartoons.
(And I STILL do 'em)
My sisters adored me.
I made people laugh
(Often by accident)
I occasionally sat
Still in church, taking in
Pictures stained colorfully
In glass frescoes.
I had a younger
Brother whom I was
Immensely proud of
And who loved me back
As best a brother
Could.

I had a roof, food,
Clean water, safety
From harm, freedom
To pray and worship,
Questionable bathing habits...
Birthday money
(For about an hour, anyway)
And love.
Wow.
I had more as a child
Than about 95% of
The entire world.

Maybe everything that
Happened to me
Brought me to this
Very
Point
In time.
Soul, wounded over time;
Creates a poem that,
Perhaps,
Can help some
Other wounded
Soul.
Tim Knight Dec 2012
Everything had a place,
neatly *******, zipped in the case.
The handle extended ready for
the station;
a one way train to a working vacation.

She stole the tickets before he’d gone, hid them away to deceive and prolong.

Over there where street names are art
and the coffee barista, 24-hour-bars
sit brimming like every star or
burning ember,
found within iron clad, raw splendour;
is where he wants to sit and reside,
to write about the commuter tide.

Books will live on reclaimed shelves,
stacked high like Tokyo, midnight hotels,
ordered by tears shed
and poetically written lines,
not alphabetically
or in genre kinds.

There, for 900 Euros a month,
with a deposit to be paid up front and all at once,
windows look out onto windows-
tenants do the same; but
this time smiling, mid-browse,
mid-game.

She stole everything he wanted to regain,
so parried her move
and took off in the rain,
to the nearest station
to the first train.
No ticket was held in his left wet hand,
just a Howl for the planned
and one for the descent, to the
north-of-the-river
Three Brothers apartment.
Visit www.coffeeshoppoems.com/ for more poetry!
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
i told you, the most volatile substance,
auto-combustion:
let's see:
the (ν / v'eh point) - touch on elocution,
almost δ'eh                   point -
but then the oddity: thievery -
hence coupling θ                and            φ,
well                     s                and             z (hardly an ß)
might also make a hush sh sh sound
for the eyes to spot with a şiş kebab being served
(kebaab if you're talking africān - prolonged
on dentistry's dire inspection) -
no diacritics and many eccentricities -
many accents, and a bowler hat at the
royal Ascot - peacock feathers to a flutter
ooh! firewood for the comedy scene -
the / d or v? veering point or the deepened
point? thyme - now that's a solitary τ (tau),
well, many more examples! ha!
thighs and thievery - theta cheese -
thrombosis - that - now that's definitely armed
with δ - thermometer - thick -
in-between scotch fudge - thinking -
throw - viably also famished - invariably
also alphabetically accounted for as: thrice -
and phosphorescent - pucker up now dear,
no point calling jane austen right now,
it's too late: better watch the jane austen book club,
now that's a great romance movie -
serious though, ah, there you have it,
though rather thought - another eccentricity
to curse periodic examples to rule:
vogue in that though - feta cheese in that latter -
no one dared to say: i vote, deer fur i am -
imagine that said in Chelsea or Camden -
you'd never get rid of those crack ******* junkies
following you to Waterloo shouting:
'we've found Napoleon! we've found Napoleon!
Napoleon! Napoleon!'
Julie Rogers Apr 2019
$12.83
And some change
That I’ve been waiting for
Shove it deep into my pocket
Next to letters scribbled
Un-alphabetically
On the back of a receipt
Letters destined for a screen
Hypocrisy
Two tacos and a tea
Cat food and Zoloft
All my favorite things
$11.29
Am I happy yet?
Am I happy yet?
Am I happy yet?
Ellyn k Thaiden Nov 2013
Lucky
Is what you are
So lucky your life
Seems happy and complete

You have three sets of grandparents
Your own mother and father are still married
You have two younger brothers
You've had so many boy friends
You seem so happy and normal
Your life seems so perfect

Reality is, my life is far from it

One pair if grandparents
Lives in the town over
Grandpa molested me
And grandma is still married to the SOB

Another pair in Illinois
Another right with them
Both love me with all their hearts
Both 2000 miles away

My mother had two husbands before my dad
One abused her and she was told kids
Were nothing but a big dream
And then she found my dad

That's when I came into the picture
They fight and argue
I use to wish they would just divorce already
But yes, things are better

I shouldn't be called a big sister
I am terrible
Always screaming and yelling
But my love for them is infinite
I just wish they knew it

One boy friend abused me
Others broke my heart
And secretly
I am dating a girl

I have so many brain issues
You want me to list them
Alphabetically
Or chronologically

My life isn't perfect but I try
You don't know the whole
You shouldn't judge anyone
On what you've heard from foreign ears

Same goes for me I guess
taylor roff Mar 2014
ABC
Alphabetically articulated habitats
For unsophisticated acrobats
Tilt sideways to the beat of the drum
Stuck in a fine daze at the bottom of a bottle of ***
Fast crying circus barkers warn of long winded fortunes
As slant eyed on lookers BOO and gnash there teeth
"Gentle men, Gentle men", the filthy little man cries
"Let me dine with your daughters for just one night
And I promise you eternal fortune"
Hillary B Apr 2018
I, like any normal human
keep a list of future names
I started it when I was young
then it was Landon and Ashlynn
kids I knew from school
written in gel glitter pen
in bright pink hues

my list is sorted alphabetically
genders separated as well
it’s followed me from Lisa Frank diaries
to pdfs files
sometimes I add to it often
other times I leave it alone

my list is heavily masculine
I'm not quite sure why
I like boys named Max and Marlon
I like Oskar and Gale too
I have a thing for Old English names
like Arthur and Holden
just to name a few
my boyfriend prefers Ash or Astrid
I like those as well
but, my favorite name is Olin
with one or two L's

I discovered this name on a lost blanket
draped over a fence post by the bay
I'd call him Ollie for fun
Ollie Ollie Oxen free! We’d play
he'd have red hair and freckles
I’d knit him many things
I'd sing him to sleep at night
I'd bake him lots of treats
when he cries I'd hold him tight
whisper that everything is alright

tests continue to be ordered
blood, ultrasounds, and more
results are coming forward
I refuse to see the score
It’s the very thing I’m dreading
I worry that it’s true
seems this list is fruitless
seems I am too
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
i still believe that φ (phi) and θ (theta) used to be a grapheme, akin to the Trojan / Roman æ, cf. Virgil's the Æneid, then too a γraφeme in german: ß, not necessarily scharfes, but rutschig s... a slippery s... s the marijuana fiend all hippy and ****, then the z, using Beat vocabulary slang, the suited and booted for either war or the office environment □ (square)... i still believe φθ used to be a grapheme... separated at birth... as with V so too Φ and Θ have the prime incisors' touch the bottom lip to be said, honestly, the bottom lip makes more bone-interactions than the upper-lip; criticism is a type of medicine, you either take it... or bite the bullet. but hear a German utter the disparity: noticeable given Rammstein: ich v. sachen: i.e. ich (-sh) v. sashen or simply sahen - maybe learning Yiddish would help - the error, apart from the Malachi introduction of polytheism with two Elijahs? well, i helped you once, i won't help you again, one proof means no repetition, boorish Moses dragged from high status and belief in a birthright to garbage, from the right-hand of the Pharaoh that Joseph was, to the lowly pits of bricklayers - English bricklayers are 'appy, indeed the Grecian dispute over the surd Ηη (eta), on a hunch... hitch-hiking letter - Hitchens attacked mother Teresa, i attacked John Paul the soocoond... a Turk with grievances illuminated the story further... pope forgave the ****** in a prison cell, once law was enforced, the mighty confusion between sins (perversions) and outright bookmaker's testimony concerning the gambling of laws. i still believe φθ used to be a grapheme... look toward languages that instil the pressures of tongue-tying-tornadoes... if it weren't the grapheme ß, i'd say it was a dance between s und zee, in that the tango was danced, and the mantis convened its presence with alimony or other tactics for the hangman to fidget on the noose; obviously as confusing as to place Backgammon alphabetically coerced with ßimilarity.

poetry hasn't been altogether banished from
the republic - i concede that poetry is
best written in a frenzy - drunk - intoxicated
with whatever is deemed necessary,
prior to the battle of Hastings (1066), Harold's
army drank and drank and drank -
berserker alternative to *****? mushrooms -
so if no battle, no vain hope to compete
with Achilles - then in poetry too, phantoms
in white, cutting and bruising with every word
emerge - a solemn pledge to the art.
well, poetry hasn't been totally banished,
it's an undercurrent - manoeuvring tactic
of intelligent argument - so many poetic techniques
are used when one suddenly appears ridiculous,
sooner or later people fall back on metaphor,
with such sly excuses: oh, not really, metaphorically
speaking - oh but that's just imagery - etc. etc.
poetry is kept, precious in every circumstance in
the **** sapiens brain - to keep appearances -
to sober up - oddly enough - poetry as a method
to sober up from a frenzy of rhetoric - the 'not really'
of things that pass - it's the usefulness of disguise,
the ridiculous and pompous can suddenly take
on priestly demur - suddenly any traces of religiosity
disintegrate, and a cold and hardened heart emerges
with crystalline belief in the ruler, the protractor
and all manners of *the sensibility of science
,
anything not humbled by science is deemed childish...
chillingly this childishness is also the childishness
waving a machete or firing a Kalashnikov - oh how
childish it becomes - the ***** to take someone's life...
great disputes in heaven, about four angels are
pop, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael and Satan -
total pop culture up there - anyway, it's not the glorification
of science is fairing well, to glorify science while
being a pauper with a limited scientific vocabulary is
already entrenched, so much so that the proof is there
regarding what's happening in western societies -
to create a universal vocabulary - a tactful one,
a vocabulary that does not impress because it does not
offend - a silk vocabulary, scientifically speaking
a smooth vocabulary, perfected to be pitched so that
the overall un-offended apathy of the listener is kept,
gay is out, homosexual is in, god forbid you mention
the word pederast or simply **** - god forbid,
bite your nails, say your mea culpa prior to jumping
into bed and all is well on the western front -
it's a revolution, didn't you hear? they say iron chains
i say liquorice tangles that can be eaten through -
apologies if your palette is not suited to the particular
Anise; but a revolution nonetheless - how did we get
to the point of trying to limit other people's vocabulary?
but of course certain words contain certain emotions,
better feel dread and disgust than an emotional flatline
with no emotion present. regarding pop culture
in heaven, ever hear the names: zehpanuryay,
abirzehyay, atarigiash, nagarniel, anpiel, naazuriel,
sastiel? you probably haven't - but it's not like you'd
keep names such as: the family of amine-boranes,
ammonia-carboxyborane, tamoxifen, paraaldehyde,
dihydropyran, polyester / dacron / mylar made from
dimethyl tereφθalate and ethylene glycol...
so what's more ridiculous? funny enough, the only
remaining aspect of the English language retaining
its roots in Saxony is expressed in chemistry,
the obvious lack of hyphen usage - chemistry is the
only revealing essence of English as having origins
in German, the excessive compounding of words,
chemical nouns that require a breathing technique
and a good optical scalpel to pronounce them -
as is well known, Germans don't believe in keeping
shrapnel, they see wordy shrapnel they get the grammatical
kiln out and melt everything together, e.g.
staatlichverantwortung (duty to the state, civic duty),
only in chemistry is the German a thick block of writing,
elsewhere it's aquatic or even gaseous - one
word jokes: Richard - ****... Mr. W. Kerr - Wayne.
jamiah Dec 2020
today i woke up to a spirit.
i opened my eyes to nothingness, but i could feel the warmth radiating off of the dip in the bed.
at first i was dumbfounded
where were you? could you be the spirit?
and so i fell in l-o-v-e with it.

       wherever i go the spirit follows.
i feel it hold my hand
i feel it massage my shoulders
i feel its l-o-v-e giving me subtle back hugs through my days
seeing its blank pages and crestfallen words in a misted silhouette
dripping invisible ink and cloudless skies
it is not tall or short, nor boisterous or timid
its l-o-v-e lives in hushed sighs
thriving in times of need and want
licking at insecurity and toeing the line between warm and unwelcome

       the spirit’s words fill the stillness
replacing anything that was missing with a brand, NOT-MISSING, in bold red font
sorting emotions into definitions and not feelings
it plays lorde on tuesdays and falls asleep at three a.m.
organizing my books alphabetically because everything must make sense
things always needs to make sense
       It listens.

       the day you left i fell in l-o-v-e with a spirit.
the embodiment of your memory
the sweetness of its silence
the comfort of an embrace

       i, reality, woke up today
       you, abstract, seep into crevices where you do not belong

turning everything into meaningless greyscale
poking out of my head and into my business
into my life
into my spirit that reeks of ink and dust
as i choke and gag on the imaginary memories
slurring on sour, dingy and desperate hidden behind my teeth.
my spirit and i play mitski on fridays

it doesn’t speak
and it dare not sing along
prodding at delusion, the spirit wipes my tears
mouths that it will be here forever
smiles that you are a future tense
that the bed was always empty, and the warmth was my own heartbeat
that my soul would not let me down so easily
you left in a future tense
where the bed is not empty, and i do not wonder of nothing
where you will speak, and you will laugh, and you will play christmas songs in the middle of july
rebranding everything missing NOT-MISSING to memories

       and once the spirit leaves me, too?
at least i'll be prepared for the emptiness
**i wrote the og last year so i thought id do a lil more
DM Pierce Dec 2012
(She cries)
Sobs in hands while kneeling,
Painted face streaking though
She's familiar with feeling shattered
And as if she's floating,
In a subjective spatial sea
That surrounds her in this ,
Eyes-to-the-ground, individualistic city.
But she's willing to suffer if it means,
Eventual healing,
And not waking up every night screaming
With blind eyes wide, grey face, fist balled tight.
There's not a dawn to come for her
'Cause it's been dark her whole life.

(She wades)
In water
Ripples flutter with each dip and kick,
Her neck sparkles from splashes and sweat.
Her underlined eyes are tired and red from having wept
Instead of slept.
Guns on shelves
Asking if she needs help.
High balconies shout down to her
On the streets and inquire
Why she hasn't climbed them,
Looked down at the tiny specks winding,
Gears whirling, patterns and plans unfurling,
Observed she was of no use, and
Suffered a last shuddering breath
And leapt
To a mercifully abrupt death.

(She wonders)*
On this daily as
She comes to grips with failing,
At life and her goals.
Having squandered any hope that was shown,
Choosing instead a life of
Closed glass doors and burned out rooms,
Quietly never forgiving herself for who,
The world tells her she is
And who she is in her heart-
That hollow rock that stores
What remains of her wishes
Stacked in columns from floor to ceiling
Silent borders of her buried tomb of mass killing.
She roams among it like a library,
It almost feels like home, to
Browse steep piles of dreams dead
From a thousand and one styles
Of homicide, alphabetically stored and stacked.    

(She stares)
Into her oxidized mirror and
Studies the divisions of face along the cracks,    
Wondering when and where she went wrong,
How far lost she is and if she'll ever again see home.          
Most days,
   She doubts it.
Whispers what do i do?
   But wants to shout it.
The fissures on her face break wide,
Plunging her into vicious waters high
   Above her,
She shouts a final something,
But produces only finite bubbles.



*Critiques are very much appreciated.
JAM Nov 2013
Why the hell do you care what I look like, I aint a ******* model
Im not employed by some type of boy toy brothel
Realize, Im quiet, but deafening, I go full throttle
Like a hit to your head with a glass bottle
YOLO?, **** that.. Im livin' like ten lives, thats my "motto"

Nah, ***** that, I have more bravado
So I'm gonna call it a "code", instead of "motto"
Just for sport
I get in raw mode, burn the lead in this pencil til' it's hollow
Go ahead sing your sorrow, but dont nobody really care if you wake up tomorrow

Like a comedian on stage gettin' boo'd
I'm about to start losing my cool, about to start gettin' rude
My mental median is the only thing saving you

Steadily, I'm knockin' out these scenarios alphabetically
Or was it numerically? Probably...
Nope... It's a science, call it chemistry
Putting together these words is my ability
And I know **** well I do it brilliantly

-J.A.M
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2017
obviously with a grounding in chemistry, i'd elevate myself to the only scientific humanism in existence, philosophy, and thus cling to an atomists' interpretation of words... a tier higher? let's just call that a kabbalistic venture... the tetragrammaton can replace the linguistic alphabet; basis: alphabetically you say A... but when you reach a moment of prior to unknown but revealed appreciation for a fact, you express awe, via ah...

and how many brain-cells died
and how much memory has become
eroded by the fallacy of
learning the alphabet?
              not the clear indicator
of numbers based upon evens & odds
interchange -
       so why randomly position
the vowels?
    why not state the five elements
first? a, e, i, o, u
and move toward the 21 pillars
of consonants: b, c, d, f, g, h, j... ? ? ?

re.: aphorism 50, ponderings V.

by being
                 vs.
                         in being
vs.
         being of-itself

             being-of-itself (source,
  direction, vector, cause, motive,
reason) - correlated similis via *by
...

   v.s being off-itself
   ( no longer enclosing,
          not supported or attached,
       away from origin
     i.e. coordinates of
   the triple negation: )0,0,0( )
  i.e. in-being -
   a self-serving (per se) manifestation
                         of change, or flux.

aus - off
   von - of
                durch - by
    im - in


    da-mit-sein:

                a purpose!

da-sein merely states:
   there's being (da ist sein)!
  actuality...

      ist da sein?! (is there being?)
   potential...

that's self-evident
   or anti-purposive in observation...

revision:

loss of article, means sharpening
the meaning (enforcing the locus):

   but the "locality" has to change
for the loss of articles - i.e.

hier-mit-sein -
  the loss of ein - the finis abstractus:
the end of abstracting -
   morph the article into a prefix
i.e. a becomes a-,
   and you're left without either
a there or a being to consider...

   ein-da-mit-sein: a there with being -
well, to forget the article,
    hier-mit-sein:
                     meaning?
   (i'm) here, with (a) purpose...

               hic sum, *** id est
  (the maxim to represent esse / being)

it has a purpose, and i have a purpose
to match its purpose of
      watching the spring exfoliation
of the per se...

and what a fetish for speaking german
            i have gathered,
ask the commies...
   they'll tell you that simply
speaking german you're somehow a fascist.

a- (without)
       ex- (out of) -
            out of every instance -
   a monism of:

poetic sketches are the supreme form
of dissociation,
   words become syllables,
while syllables become prefixes and suffixes
and affixes:

              the unison:
           a- without the monistic unison
of the omni,       namely?
   disharmony of free wills -
    
                          a- omni ex- "dictum"...

what the ancient spoke of in terms
of being as λoγoς -
refers to a temporal realm...
what evolved?
   with mass communication
  and the generally perceived electric
spider-web?
             well... the hands of power
had to change, from the greek
λoγoς, to the roman λoκυς -
enforced by heidegger's dasein...

     the locus vs. the logos...

if there is a vs. to begin with.

  hier-durch-sein
   (here, by being)
                da-durch-nicht-sein
              (there, by not being)

does this no answer einstein's mathematics
if no numbers are to be used?
       the space-time debacle?

    already philosophy has become
closely realised in quanta of the tongue
either talking, or silent...

   and if kant "allowed" for the tragedy
of von kleist and nietzsche,
   then heidegger reaped from the ashes
of hœlderlin (variation of original
umlaut ö) - the gold-standard of
enforcing the end of the war of civility
between philosophers and poets
began by plato...
                             ending with a:
reminder of the original enemy,
namely the sophists, by zeitnahweise
also called rhetoricians;
as said, for all who care to think,
              they'll be found chewing gum
and having a hard time speaking...
thinking really does, mute if not
simply obstruct the mouth from speaking.

why do you think i "*****" heidegger's
concept of dasein?
    the hyphen and the italics...
   it came down to style, and how "confusing"
it became...
      i had to explore the temporal
   dimension with the spatial originality...
otherwise known as
     the disconcerted attitude of popular
                   literature, namely journalism.
Bra-Tee Jul 2014
Nobody knows how ICE feels like cause everybody knows how the COLD feels like. Even alphabetically, its been proven that LOVE doesn't start with a Kiss; it starts with an "L".

#‎And just because you turned 18: doesn't mean your skirt should be higher then a GAS price...
Bra-Tee Jun 2014
Nobody knows how ICE feels like, coz everybody knows how COLD feels like. Its even alphabetically proven that LOVE doesn't start with a "K"iss; it starts with an "L". In other words, gravity is what attracks me the most; not you...

#And ‎just because you turned 18: doesn't mean your skirt should be higher then a petrol price...
Katie Mora Apr 2011
We are the kinds of people
who love first
     (maybe against mountains
     landscapes
     mountainscapes)
fingerpick cherries
cherrypick at dawn
paint birds and blues and telephones.

Live in E
die in B
sleep in space.

Write of main characters
     (but dream of antagonists
     on planes
     or fields further upstate).

Frame flowers before they have the chance
     to wilt
stuff clothes into backpacks
sing along with church choirs
     from the alleyway next door.

Imagine biography covers and post-war memorials
look at poetry like a lampshade
leave for fear of holding on
return in hopes of holding
     (set sail for north woods
     carry weight like hurricanes
     steal moments for beggars
     retreat as quickly as god)
stride past roads with cameras.

Stencil where we should sketch
finish with a flourish
lay by waterfronts
lie by stormfronts
take breaths like in movies.

Need like children
dream of signs
     (road signs
     shop signs
     celestial signs
     all are the same, all are the same)
climb heights to speak of majesty
climb down to think of it.

Witness each other's faces like
     smatterings of people in cars.

Arrange alphabetically
depart dramatically
realize with horror
     but abolish without difficulty
watch things fall apart
mix up the pieces
work without ethic.

     (Things we get wrong we
     right but things we get
     right are already wrong.)

Wind up in books we've never read.

Change chords and regret the knowing
     that we can never not know last.
Emmanuel Chikody Aug 2016
A.
Alphabetic Avalanche! An Avidly Artwork Appraising Adonai Alphabetically. And Also Awaken All Asleep Amidst Advancing Avenging Armies.And Acting As Agent Against Agony And Aches

B.
Beware, Because Boosting Breaks Bond By Bringing Barriers Between Brothers.But Brilliantly, Bible Basically Balance Brawls, Battles Between Bloods. Be Born-again.

C.
Curse, Carnal-living, Chaos, Commotion, Catastrophe, Carnage, Causality, Certainly Cleared.Courageously Christ Carried Cross to Calvary Creating Captivating Convivial

D.
Daily Deepen D Deliberate Demarcated Distance Dug for Devil D Deceiver.Devourers, Darkness & Demons.Diligently Despise Denominational Drape

E.
El-Shaddi Effortlessly Evaporates Every Enigma & Enemies.Ending & Exodus Evil Exacerbating Entities.Everthing is Everything in Elohim.

F.
Faithless Fellowship Fabricate Flippant, Feeble Followers.Faithful Fellowship
Factually Flourish Fantastically

G.
God's Grace Grants Great Galvanizing Gift & Glory.Giving Generally Generates
Greatness.God is Gracious.

H.
How Has Hatred Helped Humans? Habitual Happiness Hedges Hatred, Healing Hazardous Hiatus Harming Human race

I.
Impeccable Insight Into Immaculate, Immortal & Invisible God. Instigate Intriguing Illumination Inside our Inner being

J.
Jesus Christ the Just Judge, Jam Jungle Justice.Jailed Jeopardy, Jabbed Jezebel's Jinx & Juju Jolting Jealous Jesters

k.
Koinonia Keeper, Keenly Keep Kneeling before the King of Kings.Keep Knocking on Kingdom's door

L.
Listen, Learn, Light-up, Look Lively. Let Love Liquidate Loathsomenes. Least Little, Lowlife, Lazy Loathers Labouring Lengthily Limits your Level

M.
Morning-Star, Most-High, Messiah, My Majesty, Mentor, Master, Maker, Mountain Mover, Merciful-One ,Milk & Maintain My Ministry

N.
Nobody Needs Negative Nonconformists Nearby. Nevertheless, Neglect Notorious, Nonsensical, Narrow-minded Notions from Nihilist Nicely

O.
One Overcome Obstacles, Only by Obeying Our Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Overall ruler Outcomes Of Obedience Outshines Offerings, Oaths & Other Opponents.

P.
Proper Preparation & Plans, Plus Patience & Persistence Protrude Powerful, Progressive Prayer Performance.Prayer Penalise Problems

Q.
Quickly & Quietly, Quench Queasy Qualms, Quarrels & Quacking Quibblers.

R.
Religionists Removing Restitution Rarely Recognise Real Repentance. Returning Reports Remains Relevant Revelation Regarding Repentance

S.
Since Saviour's-blood Saves & Sanctify Souls, Sinners Seeking Salvation Sacrificially & Sordidly, Should Stop Searching. Selah

T.
Thanksgiving Through Tough Times, Turns Trials, Terror, Temptation & Tribulations To Testimony

U.
Understanding Urges Us Unto Universal Unity. Unfortunately its Unattainable.

V.
Vengeance Vented Via Venomous Violence Vaguely Visualises Victory. Value Virture

W.
With Worthy Word We Warn Women, Walk Wisely When Working With Watchful Workers

X.
Xeric

Y.
You're Young; Yield Yourself to Yahweh

Z.
Ziplock Zeitgeist Zapping Zombies (Zealously Zonked). Zoom into the Zenith Zone.Zero letters remaining
The first letter of the Alphabet 'A' is used to explain to reader what they find while  going through the poem.The  letter 'X',has only one word which means  'A dry habitation' and it chiefly explains to readers that the stanza for 'X' is dried with only one word
Jesse Cox Dec 2015
I’ve noticed at times
bustle and grime— ironically—
maintains close proximity
to reprieves from high anxiety.

It reminds me of the dissociative
peace of Clay street,
the way the shadows fall in reverse order
over the alphabetically arranged streets.

All the while the boisterous nights
on the Brooklyn block persist just half
a train ride away and we go to spend
our night touching elbows with strangers

and bumping into ***** walls until
we stumble home, kicking litter and
******* in flowerpots to watch
the sun shed light on the streets—

this time in perfect order.
From seven floors up, we watch
the blissful morning with bloodshot eyes
and coffee in hand.
From Fall 2015 portfolio
Robert C Ellis Feb 2016
Anteloping arms, grappling smiles
Errors of houses arranged alphabetically
The breaded butter, the backbones
Of traditional garland, alit with bulbs,
Collapsing tinsel and tin harmonies
A belated world, buffeted with meat
Lacqured in liquors, merriness gay
Flipping shadows about the streets
Holiday
Sam Temple Aug 2015
broken lines of tragic poetry
spread *****-nilly across the imitation hard-wood flooring
polyurethane broad leaf maple
complete with swirls and lines
as if it were somehow damaged in a lightning storm and forced to grow
twisted and bent
I stare into the abyss of half-written sentences
and six rhyme sets
bent, rent, dent, cent, divergent, spent
home, gnome (Alaska or little dwarf), poem, loam, roam, beachcomber
draft, raft, laughed, giraffe, bath, Taft (little town near Lincoln City)
and so on and so on and so on
til death –
grasping at passing visions and mental images
attempting to reconcile this pile into worthwhile stylings
and filing them alphabetically …

there I did it accidentally….
as if to prove the point on my head
has a friend.

Revolving floor of soreness
my pores ooze from unrest
able to fully digest
what I peruse and use for
my next ‘write’ fest
something about ****** and recess…
and the best dressed in the west
confessing diabetes….
I digress
and pretend this never happened –
Em MacKenzie Jan 2019
My demons and shadows are placing bets against me,
black is heartbreak and red is destruction.
They watch the wheel spin so intensely,
holding their breath so strongly that it’s creating suction.
The winner of the jackpot round
will play Russian Roulette with my life,
it’s inevitable, fated, destined and bound,
‘cause I brought a pen to a knife fight.

I’m winning in a debate,
on a topic for which I don’t care,
it won’t change the structure or state,
for a system that will always be there.
Who are we alone? Who are we together?
Drink the marrow straight from the bone,
so you can savour my blood forever.

I lost all faith in my last name,
as a MacKenzie- “I shine; not burn.”
But I feel the heat from the blame,
and the scarred mark I was born to earn.
The funeral pyre is already lit,
the flames flicker and engulf my strife,
I’m too stupid to halt and call forfeit,
‘cause I brought a pen to a knife fight.

Empty hands, and broken fingers,
hanging strands, clings and lingers.
Sunken shoulders, and lifeless eyes,
a name in my folders, alphabetically organized.

You can’t decipher a word’s meaning,
if the word is never actually spoken.
The tree never fell but it’s slightly leaning,
surprisingly roots just can’t be broken.
And sometimes I’m scared to blink,
even though I’m unimpressed with this sight,
I’ll be bleeding out in colourful ink
as I brought a pen to a knife fight.

You know sharks don’t sleep
and sadly neither do I.
But now I’m in too deep,
“you’re gonna need a bigger boat”
just to get by.

You told me to put on my dancing shoes,
and I strapped on two concrete blocks.
You asked me to relay the news
but I went for the thrills and shocks.
Now my oxygen is running low;
my heavy head is finally feeling light.
I’ll still try to give you a good show
but I brought a pen to a knife fight.
Lewis Bosworth Jan 2017
You may not want me to tell you about
The Galilean thermometer,
But I’m going to tell you anyway:
[It will improve your life!]

The GT is colorful – its rainbow
Of glass bubbles sparkle
Slowly as they sink and swim
Buoyantly in liquid.

Signor Galileo was savvy for his age
[Late Elizabethan],
Even though he didn’t shoot an
Apple off anybody’s head.

GG was one step ahead of Einstein
[Alphabetically]
As his popular theorem posited that
If  D↓, T↑.

This can be seen by ogling the GT
[Note the dog tags]
And checking to see if the blues
Are higher than the reds.

In Galilean terms the colors of the
Glass bulbs are unimportant
Since D is a function of the dog tags,
[Ma Nature dictates the T].

GG invented the GT because he had
A dream one day that
The climate in Pisa was warming up
[The tower began to lean].

Rising and falling as a result of density
Isn’t new to science:
[Jump in the neighborhood pool].
Ethanol in water.

GG’s heirs haven’t profited much from
the GT, nor has it been widely
copied by entrepreneurs of note:
[“slow and lazy”].

The verdict on the GT is still out, but
Early reports suggest it won’t
Exceed the popularity of the Chia Pet
As the holidays approach.


©  Lewis Bosworth, 6-2016

— The End —