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You always read about it:
the plumber with twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
From diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.

Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the big event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little gold slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
The don't just heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of ***** clothes,
the tongues poverty, tears like ****.
The surf pushes their cries back.
Listen.
They are bewitched.
They are writing down their life
on the wings of an elf
who then dissolves.
They are writing down their life
on a century fallen to ruin.
They are writing down their life
on the bomb of an alien God.
I am too.
We must get help.
The children are dying in their pens.
Their bodies are crumbling.
Their tongues are twisting backwards.
There is a certain ritual to it.
There is a dance they do in their pens.
Their mouths are immense.
They are swallowing monster hearts.
So is my mouth.

Listen.
We must all stop dying in the little ways,
in the craters of hate,
in the potholes of indifference--
a ****** in the temple.
The place I live in
is a maze
and I keep seeking
the exit or the home.
Yet if I could listen
to the bulldog courage of those children
and turn inward into the plague of my soul
with more eyes than the stars
I could melt the darkness--
as suddenly as that time
when an awful headache goes away
or someone puts out the fire--
and stop the darkness and its amputations
and find the real McCoy
in the private holiness
of my hands.
devante moore Mar 2015
She was the prom queen
Beautiful, stunning
Popular
Her body matured more then most as a teen
Every guy wanted her
Girls jealous of her
She became a smoker
She was ill prepared
Inhaling sickness
Exhaling death
She didn't know was there
She gave her life then an there
It seared her throat
But she didn't care
Her inhales were long
She exhales with ease
Wanted to impress
She ache for popularity like a fein
After a couple of years the effects creeped in like a disease
She seemed to age twenty years
Wrinkles appeared
He hair thinned
So did her body
Fingers stained yellow
Her teeth rotted brown
Her breath just as foul
The prom queen couldn't be found
Her limbs begin to die
Amputations a daily routine  
Her voice raspy
Followed by a bone chilling cough
Deep ridges on her lips hides a smile
Now the prom queen is just a picture
That she doesn't look at
Hanging on the wall
Zero the Lyric Jan 2013
I recall hearing that term once in high school,
"Urban forestry", a paradox, seemingly and yet,
That is exactly what it is.
Strips of land sanction to be aesthetically pleasing.
For whom, I have not a clue.
I would have preferred a lane or so,
Over the regular 8' by 1' square of trimmed trees.
I also grimace within the grace
Of those knotted furled fists toward a sky asking WHY!?
After a much calmer gardener had pondered the same word
Underneath his humming chainsaw
(Though probably for a more debatable material world)
Amongst other cuboid amputations.
Not to mention those solid soldiers
Whose attention is really standing dead in plain sight until
Wrinkled pavement is not enough ground to hold.
Then our hero makes local news in an inhumane, absolutely atrocious,
Final act of trespassing, vandalism, homicide, and suicide.
Of course nobody saw it coming.
Undetected and decayed for half a decade.
With so so many Ys it is easier to yelp for for those Xs
Crossing against our assumed perfect grids and parallels
To those stories of stacking passed from older cries
For HELP! Though those did not settle quite so well
So I proceed passing over a particularly loud leaf
Amidst this dry pondering
And snap out of the whats and whys and wheres
To take another look around at my illustrious
Urban Forest.
Unto a more practical pensive test,
Which side of that phrase,
Burdens the winning emphasis?

Well, still warblers and sparrows to inspire a song
For how this within time shall also pass along.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i don't think i wrote something incoherent... i mean, i could be accussed of having written something incoherent... but the way i look at it, i didn't exactly write a discourse... platonism - theatrical notation of philosophy, theatre as such... became abhorred way-back before platonistic abhorrence of poetry became established in the koranic text... so no... i don't think i wrote something incoherent, i might be guilty of writing it in a berserk-like frenzy... but it's not incoherent... it's simply said in a language, that's says θ = φ, ε = η, o = ω, ξ = χ, so you see... all the aesthetics dwindles... because i wrote this without it being reminiscent of a beautiful conversation under the moon in some exotic place... or a conversation you might have in a supermarket when buying a pint of milk... that's why the above stated greek letters are actually the same... and they exist as "chiral" if you decide to take into consideration aesthetic orthodoxy with origins in making literacy a monopoly... nothing contained in here is incoherent... the only "incoherency" of this piece is that: you wouldn't really talk to someone about it, when buying groceries, or having a nostalgic conversation with a friend... it's ad abstractum... that thing that's also not bound to any parliament or church.

some people really do aspire to be quenched
by the phenomenon status...
   to be the slang first said,
   to be the last, doctrine fed,
          i admire these people, well, admire,
like i'd admire king Solomon -
who prayed to be bewstowed by wisdom,
and what came of his prayer?
              a weak heart, and a walrus status
with a harem...
        i hold my **** like king David holds the lyre...
call it what you want...
              but you see a shagged out beauty like
Dakota Skye, and you just have to bash out
the tennis *****...
                   it comes naturally:
will i get a crown for celibacy, or should i wait
for prostate cancer...
          is there anyone in the vicinity to help me out?
not really...
i can't fanticise about either of my neighbours...
   ****-wits attest to the tried path of protestantism's
freedom-libido...
            but what i'm curious about more perverse
than that... perosnal hygiene isn't really the question
being asked...
                  yes, take a ****, partake in the double-quickie...
it almost feels like ******* and taking a ****
is a *******'s worth of v.i.p. pass when
they say shalom, you ease out the **** and
*******... hence the ******* perfume to boot...
   why do it in the shower?
       why get comfy and do it in an armchair?
   lucky me... i need no *****...
and doubly-lucky me: i read enough marquis de sade...
   oh no, he's not repetitive in his book *******
,
he's lost the ability to lullaby you to sleep
strapped to a chair in a sadist's disneyland by now...
       but hell: i see no need to glorify these assertions,
i'm just gagging for the moment my
peers will find it boring doing what they do,
when they reach middle-age and have forgotten
******* per se, as a driving factor for
imagination, or how one thrives on keeping
imagination alive by jerking off...
            it becomes a story of: not really looking
for my dream girl... just give me anything that moves
and i'll be content...
                 when was the last time you
picked up a bisexual thai girl in a park off a bench,
took her home, played her some jazz, and later
****** her in the garden by the moonlight?
       what finally convinced her?
in her own words: i've never seen so many books...
   well yeah, that's modesty creeping up on me.
    and unless you're not using the medicine:
what?! you gonna start imagining ******* your mother?
    the point is that Kant can never become a
populist philosopher... he made his life so: that
he never encountered the weitgheist of Napoleon
at Juna... Kant wasn't the antithesis of Marxism...
      you can't take Kant to a movie premier in Leicester Sq....
   you can take Kant to the pulpit...
   sure thing, you can take Hegel, as you do,
to get people mobilised...
       that's why i prefer Kant in that he gave me something
to work on... as much as i admire
                  the people subjected to creating phenomenons of
themselves... so that people can be cloned and bleached
and be told the marching orders: these days musicians
are the kings... poets are the paupers...
   i identify with neither...
                       i mean, just the one word he invented,
if you want to ask me about a priori and a posteriori
atypical things people regurgitate about Kant,
i'm not your man...
                      if i can salute to the pig through of everything
and nothing,
                       i'll make a statue from oyster shells instead...
it's enough that i told you what Kant wrote
that 0 = negation...
                               but given what i'm trying to
really say is the people who give us individuality...
it doesn't matter whether you live in a democracy or
an autocracy...
   the matter is simpler, because only one word has
any meaning right now: to congregate at the altar of
the noumenon...
                               res per se... that the latin translation...
   i don't know how best to poeticise the blurry line
between psychiatry and philosophy, given that most
    psychiatrists would put philosophers in bird cages
and asked them to howl like wolves rather than
tweet like budgies...
                            all i can say about a priori
and a posteriori though?
                                              outside of time and space,
a bit like: beyond good and evil...
    a priori i denote by the right-wing word pure...
   and a posteriori by the      ditto           word impure...
    ethnical alliance of words, you know how the 20th century
story goes...
                      a priori: a blank canvas...
          a posteriori: the painting...
                          i'm not going to stutter on the word
knowledge any time soon...
                                        i see no fascination with knowledge,
i know the world is more transit and fleeting
if i sentence my emotional whole to doubt,
than if i sentence it to denial...
                      to a rigidness... that i sentence it to a permanence,
an illusion, of growing old and having all the lovelies
at my biding, in a political cartwheel...
                           either knowledge diminishes doubt,
or it embraces denial... but the wavering of thought can't
be detached from thinking...
                     with thought being ascribed denial rather than
doubt... it soon morphs into delusion...
                 can you really sport that sort of blonde quiff and
speak about red buttons?
    it's not even Friday and i'm sorta waiting for a mob
boxing match in Washington... easy kicks...
     it's Klitschko vs. Tyson on the cards,
   if i'm not feeling it... then all the past electorate weeks
have been a waste... all the protests signifying a jack-in-a-box...
who escaped it as nothing but purple puff...
and rarely, rarely... do you see people asking
for riches in terms of the words they use...
     vocab materialism is a bit like actual materialism...
a gold-plated toilet seat is about as sought-after as a word
    without being systematically used to banish synonyms...
the horrid affair of english intellectualism...
   the presupposed moral authority...
                            i mean, they moralise *******,
you go to a brothel... they strap a pair of dove wings to prostitutes
and call you a ****...
                          and there's you doing the opposite
of what should attract *******...
       i mean: you pay an extra ten quid to ****** mollest her
oyster of a *******...
                   that has to be some sort of Gethsemane *******...
oh please lord: when will it end?! (enter herr cackle,
the self-righteous faun, dressed as a magpie)...
        never knew that a kiss meant so much
when you didn't put 1 with 2 to make it a *******
and asked the devil to debate: what did i wrong here?
ah, that bit... jumped in the bath and soaked myself
in cold water while she remained, bed bound and *******...
    god: those tickling *****!
                    i could do it 20 times a day and i'd still feel
goosebumps all over them...
                     it's like that talk of the ghost-limb
when people get gangrene / frostbite amputations...
    well, that's what i call a case of "castrato" -
             i'm getting the impressions i lost them to
serve the Catholic church... shame the pharaohs of egypt
never asked the eunuchs how to sing...
   real shame that... a right ol' spot of bother...
   they were the harem toys when the pharaoh couldn't keep up,
i say: there's a limit... the ***** count sometimes
doesn't compete with the libido...
after a while it dilutes and you're shooting blanks...
   but you have a harem of 3000 ladies, king Solomon...
how will you keep them harem bound?
   king Solomon also said: i need 300 pristine virgins
to be castrated... that's 3 to 10 ratio... but since i'm the king
i need my lineage...
and remember that crazy cat lady?
                          she kept 30 cats and those 30 cats just said:
the lady's o.k.... all these 29 cuddly ***** are bothering my
beauty sleep! dogs can sniff each other up... cats?
primo solipsists... they need their personal space...
            the "crazy" cat lady wasn't crazy, the 30 cats became
demented... last time i heard tigers weren't responsible for
wilderbeast stampedes...
                 solipsists... well: "solipsists"... bound to the strict
natural dictum of their species...
              don't you think tigers would love to
roam like hyenas or wolves, or laze like lions?
                        i was really talking about Kant through
this Dionysian frenzy, wasn't i?
                     how when not to look toward
imitating a noumenon or forging out a route toward
such a circumstance?
                            even Heidegger move away from
this ultimate pinpoint...
                                Heidegger claimed that his dasein
made very little of a constancy of the Cartesian thing,
meaning that he couldn't stand-still...
         that somehow being was greather than stasis...
which already create
            the Kantian parallel predating Heidegger himself...
   the suffix of dasein (sein) is what's considered thought...
         it's a prophetic circumstance of seeing a there,
necessarily a future time... and hence him being branded
**** eternal... when in fact that can't be the case...
            nonetheless Kant moved away from Descartes
and said: res per se...
                          and not res cogitans...
he did so, as is apparent in his critique by isolating
                       the precursor: "i think" as an ambiguous fact...
  ambiguous in a sense of: providng the encapsulating
  mechanics for what is best attested as the populist vocab
calls it: eccentricity of "i am" - that which attracts
         the reversal of "i think" being an ambiguous fact,
and more of a chance to demand a circus, of not being
quiet adept at making "i think" an amiguous fact...
and beside the circus of the "madman", having qualms
   as to why adrenaline took over the argument for
and purpose of there being thought involved.
        -  oh honey... i'll mind-******* and eat your
refrigerator out, and by the end we'll be singing sweet ol'
Alabama wishing for a single summer by a lake
frolicking like two butterflies... if this **** can ever come to
an end   -
             Kant didn't, in the cursor that's i am, posit as
a necessary ambiguity... (the res and res per se
were already established) -
                   hence Heidegger had to come...
and make thinking the ambiguity... and that ambiguity did
come, in the form of the ad abstracto there;
                         thinking fizzled out (as Heidegger himself
concluded: we're still not thinking) -
            it's not that we're not thinking, it's that not being "there"
      dictates to us the subsequently not being -
         i.e. that's the borderline distinction -
          by actually being "there" we wouldn't be thinking anyway...
no one thought in Auschwitz...
                            there was no thought encompassed in that hell...
it was dogmatism on one side, versus natural intuition on
the other...  the one side being nurtured by political dogma:
the latter half being bound to an unforgiving nature
                  of man's testmanet outside of all fears of the natural,
and elemental torture...
   as man is prone: with the fewer number of natural
tragedies... he's bound to reach for the godhead and speak
with a tongue, like the sound of Xerxes ordering the Hellespont
to be whipped still..
                  and i know this will have very or only little
appeal in the anglophone world...
                       i'm not at all bothered by it...
what's obstructing the anglophone sphere is this basic need
to pray at the altar of pragmatism...
    you can't make language complicated enough these days...
   philosophy isn't recognised as something beyond
the simple arithmetic of: i can make my speech coherent...
   or... i can write a, b, c, d, e... like Kant says of mathematical
language: 1 + 1 = 2... but then you come to university
level mathematics... and it's no longer 1 + 1 = 2 to be concerned
with... that's what philosophy testifies... a complexity beyond
learning a foreign language, so you can live in Paris,
          and buy groceries, or raise a family... so:
   even language these days can't be deemed worthy of
complication... which, mind you, on my behalf
would make me throw a punch in your face... and your attempt
at complication language a mere ugh... and me then
applauding you toward the current simplicity of the world
affairs... or at least to the psychiatric parlour...
    because... last time i heard... only anti-psychiatrists
bothered to read philosophy books... actual psychiatirsts
either read pharmacology booktlets for the poor...
    and those sofa-session monologues stemming from Freud
of rich under-****** or over-zelous in dreaming rich kids.
vircapio gale May 2013
the bomb does not explode. there,
only aftermath is real like amputations
thoughts are cutting through my flesh
from years ago. when that marine
i went to high school with told us
of his tumor, the surgery he
couldn't pay for. the nuclear facility
he was stationed by. his bunk-mates,
their brains cut also, angry now
and as he loudly spoke beneath
his bandaged head we nodded, cut his
story out as perhaps true, not worth
looking into
Riley Young Dec 2016
The clavicle of my thought
Corroding my innerds as though knowing me
Amputations avast my yearning body
Smother me with remorse
Burn thy soul with your ecombered hands
Take the life which was given to me without my consent
Undeserving to be in such place
The music notes of life
A wide spread torrent
Downpour on those who do not believe
Those who shan't believe
Those
Those are free
Jagged pulse
Viens caked
Flow has softened
Work has stopped
Clarerize Jun 2019
As the days go by I am grateful to be by your side,
The many ups and downs we share only makes us stronger.
When we lie in bed together with your arms around me, I feel the safest.
I can let go of all my worries, fears and doubts.

I am your queen and you are my king until the ends of time.
My dreams are part of yours, my amputations are yours.

When life throws us obstacles we over come them. When we stand hand in hand nothing can stop us.
My heart is yours deom now until the end of time
Mike Essig Dec 2015
My cat Evan knows nothing of war
or famine or pestilence or blood.
Bravo to his ignorance of ideology!
He cares nothing for torn soldiers,
starving children, the Ebola virus,
or oozing traumatic amputations.
He sits solemnly on the recliner
listening to John Coltrane
thinking only tranquil cat thoughts,
imagining nothing more disturbing
than kibble and another day of naps.
He does not need to consider himself.
He is himself - a sleek, gray
untutored genius of silence:
the only true Buddha I've ever met.
   - mce
Kylie Jensen Dec 2015
moon pulls the traveller
along sea beds and tides
cloaked from adversity
in black ink disguise

an uncurling of limbs
leave us all in a trance
she moves with pure grace
in her hypnotic dance

amputations of limbs
embrace freedom in kind
regeneration of self
leaves old paths behind
Prompt: Octopus
Paul House May 2018
The twisted, bare branches
of the vines in winter
have something of the sea
and a memory of centuries
healing their gnarled amputations.
To see a vineyard, thus,
spread out across the earth
in neat little rows
is to look at stillness.
Or maybe it is patience.
The quiet, passive waiting for the inevitable.
The lurch out of silence into life.

July now and, though the base is untouched,
though there’s still the sea and an age,
still the same crippled shape in the branches,
an outside has blasted across the fields,
so green with the sun shining through them.
And from this abundant foliage, order,
at least to an exterior eye
which sees only one thing or its opposite.
Earth and objects only cannot falsify alone.
How easy it is to be happy.

And how easy to compare with snow
those fallen poplar seeds that covered
the ground towards the end of spring,
and so dry that, seeing soldiers
lighting fast, impermanent fires
like fuses to some explosion,
I, too, had to try and so bent
and clumsily set fire to a huge pile
which scorched a path
a yard wide across the grass
and burnt the hairs from your arm.
Later to step into the river,
not knowing that the seeds had spread
even that far, making it seem
more like the earth than water.

How much there is to give,
to learn about each other.
So much seems solid for so long and isn’t,
seems forgetting and is waiting.
So, slowly and with many deaths,
like the building of a cathedral,
it all accumulates, then disperses,
leaving time like a stork nesting.

But for towns, for cities, there is
not this hording of experience,
just monuments of cement and stone.
Memories can be found, of course,
An old wall in Logroño,
an aqueduct in Segovia,
but these memories are a comfort,
not a weight to be carried forward.
The difference between a mother’s kiss
and that of a lover leaving.

Strange how things live towards a point
which, when arrived at, nullifies
that which has gone before,
becomes the point from which its life begins.
The name Guernica does not mean
for many an oak tree, distant lords
swearing to respect the law.
It means either war or Picasso.

Life can only be built on levels of reaction,
extremes of light and measured darkness,
what exists and what is invented,
love where silence matters
and the sleeping world given in
to our far from careful keeping
when what there is in the head is too large.

We cast off the unimaginable and sad
and the intrusion of fact narrows
all boundaries to the certain,
growth permitted in one way only.
Ah, the half-truths of poetry,
the evasion, the huge deceit.

Near my house there is a mountain.
People call it el León Dormido,
and when seen from one side,
looking out from the city,
you can believe it to be so,
this lumbering, wind-modelled rock
really is a lion asleep.
So long as you never see it
from any other direction.

To make the journey happily
out along the dust road
or maybe even by train,
gripping a bag of grapes,
is to allow the truth and fact
to step into your present.
From one side the mountain’s magical,
from the other three it’s nothing,
not even much of a mountain.    

Too much examination can be bad
as we invent what it is we wish to see,
invent, distort and fabricate.
But when we find what lies behind,
the truth is there waiting for us
like an eagle high above the mountain
casting its shadow down across a fox.
Tom Balch Oct 2018
What It Was Like
( In The Trenches )

Sandbags riddled with bullet holes made up
the parapet, and barbed wire protected the
trenches which were waterlogged knee deep in
mud and stinking from overflowing cesspits.

Every soldier was infested with lice and from
this, many were suffering the severe pains of
trench fever. The cold wet and unsanitary
conditions were causing trench foot, this in
a lot of cases led to amputations.

Over the top "No Mansland" an inhospitable
wasteland of craters and blackened tree stumps.
The burnt out remains of buildings added to the
eeriness of this desolate hell on earth.

Brown and black rats in their thousands
were feeding on the bodies of the dead,
which were then exposed from their shallow graves.
The air was filled with the smell of cordite
and the sickening odour of poisonous gas.

Death was the trenches companion day and night
from the snipers bullet, artillery bombardment,
gas and disease. That’s what it was like.

So was it any wonder that on that Christmas morning
the troops from both sides laid down their arms
and walked out into no mansland, shaking hands,
exchanging cigarettes and chocolate, showing
photographs of their families, and wishing each
other a “ Merry Christmas ”
and guess what, they even played football.
Zywa Apr 23
Tall bite tales wander

about and attach themselves --


to amputations.
Novel "The Moor's Last Sigh" (1995, Salman Rushdie), chapter (3-) 16

Collection "Low gear"
Cliff Perkins Jan 2019
I walk these woods
Wild azaleas, ladies slippers and sweet shrub
Bobcats, deer, turkey and bear
Towering pines and hardwoods
A cushion of straw and leaves
Knee-deep in some places.

I remember rabbit hunting here as a child.
Back then, there were still open spaces
Filled with broom sedge, honeysuckle and bare red clay.
Blackberry briars and pine trees no taller than my head
Red Cedars and hollies everywhere for Christmas
We always came and cut our tree here.

It seems an untouched wilderness now
But if you go slow and look closely
You can still see faint reminders of my people

Flat stones stacked three high
The pillars for a barn or house long gone
A stone chimney half fallen
Because bees have stolen the mud chinking.

The outline of the springhouse
Where they kept the milk cool
The hole where later, when they could afford the time
They dug a well by hand.


Rusty barbed wire growing out of the center of huge trees
A reminder of better times
When there was money to buy wire
And enough neighbors that the cattle no longer roamed free

A whisky still by the creek
Dug down into a hole to hide it
The still full of axe holes
Cut by the revenuers
When they finally found it

Irish whisky to grease the fiddle
At the barn dance
To make the feet fly in a merry jig
And to drown the sorrows  
There were plenty of those

The farm next door
Where the husband went out to the barn one day
And hanged himself.

Ditches deeper than a man is tall
Zigzag across the landscape like lightning strikes
Reminders of what they learned
That the rains would wash the top soil down into the creek
Leaving nothing to nourish the crops.

In the end, the government offered assistance
Men with book learning called County Agents
Men who knew how to survey elevations
And design terraces that still curve through the deep woods

It was too little too late
But farming was all they knew
So the farmers spent weeks and months and years
Digging and damming to build
Those little pyramids of salvation
To save their soils

They were poor as the dirt itself.
And now, even the dirt was gone

It was no way to live
Finally they began abandoning the farms.
Slowly at first, then an avalanche
They went to the towns and cities
Assembly line workers
Who didn't mind 12 hour days
Or amputations.

The farms stood there
Little ghost towns on every 50 acres.
Snakes and mice moved into the houses.
The buildings burned or rotted
The storehouse, the smokehouse, the barn, the chicken coop.

These are my people
I walk where they walked
I see what was lost
I cherish what remains
(a poor excuse for legs),
and get me the latest
sophisticated prosthetics advancements,
whereat integration of cultured stem cells
into custom made appendages
allows, enables, and provides
unfortunate recipients of amputations
to experience sensations.

No more will yours truly
(skinny legged sexagenarian)
envy amputees fitted with smart limbs
equipped tricked out arms and legs,
cuz he will be proud owned
with false limbs
(mainly legs, I did not decide
about equally spindly arms)
finding a once nasty, short
and brutish solitary
Norwegian bachelor farmer
transformed into a very charming, tall
and humane debonair troubadour
rivaling the likes of any swain.

No insult meant
for those handicapped,
who experience(d) phantom limb
perhaps linkedin to
fierce near mortal kombat,
wondering if stayin alive
after surviving serious wombs
that killed fellow combatants
trying your darndest
to feel worthy earning a purple heart,
(a distinguished military decoration
awarded in the name of the President

those who got wounded or killed
while serving in the U.S. armed forces),
with attendant laurels such as
handsome veteran benefits,
answering the call of duty
nevertheless daily reminders
being survivor as a foreigner
waging war, when host country
loathed American military as infidels,
whose countrymen bathed
innocent defenseless civilians
in blood of barbarity.

Stop saying sassy sobriquets schooled
***** spindleshanks...
studious skinny scruffy scribe.

Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sniggering,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,
savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic

sensibility, spurring, seething,
somewhat stultified, sophisticated,
spellbound spirited scabrous
schlemiel schlemazel, stenciled,
sundered sniveling sanguine storied
snakebitten sojourning *******,
skeptical shoddy sophomoric
screwball, subtly sagacious,
stunted, sclerotic, scrappily
shuffling short, Shylock
styled sideburns Semite,

sainted Shasta sipping
shriveled self secluded sad sack,
sullenly syncopated, synthesized,
slobbering sybaritic, scruffy
sheepish sketchy scalawag,
Socratically scrutinizing, seizure
stricken, stoically sneezing,
shamed Skidrow skeezer, shifty,
sweaty, sham shaman,
supremely spidery, schmaltzy,
sylan seeking subsidized succor,

self shuttered, sequestered,
sidelined, shiftless, shabby,
semantically snazzy, soldiering,
shrieking, skulking, somber,
stooping, Segway scootering,
schmart spendthrift, Swahili
speaking, straitlaced, streamlined,
spongebobbing, sandal shod
sealegs, squarepants sporting
spectacles, sedate, sensate,
sentient, ship shaped,

shanghaied, salubrious,
slithering, snakish, stuttering,
sluggish, smashface scarred,
sober, solitary, sangfroid
skidamarink singing, Shamokin
speaking scrivener, scuzzy,
spunky, starved, submissively
suicidal, sunburned,
salaried shuffling senescent
snoutish soundcloud shutterflying
snapchatting Schwenksville schnorrer.
Jay earnest Sep 2019
Too astute. Honey in a jar. Loaded with cement and tablets of oxy. 4 fingers and 3 amputations, she lays in agony, curled up and her eylids clasped. Red door full opens and so do the sojourners into the red lobby. They spelled your name wrong. They spelled it backwards, and now you must go back into the light little girl, back to get your wings, back to tip toe in silence. Without tears
The story of Cinderella in
the earlier times, didn't
always have a
HAPPY ENDING,
well, for Cinderella and the Prince, YES!!!  
but for the stepsisters, it was RATHER DISTURBING.
What was told was FANTASTIC, on
the other hand was DRASTIC.
Instead of glass slippers,
it was depicted
SQUIRREL FUR SLIPPERS.
As, gruesome as it sounds,
such a horrid
SITUATION,
the STEPSISTERS
tricked the prince
by inflicting
SELF-AMPUTATIONS.
They did this to
themselves
so, their feet would
fit the SLIPPERS.
But, through the
HEAVENLY DOVES,
the prince realized
the bleeding
of their
SELF-INFLICTED
AMPUTATIONS.
When it was all said and done,
Cinderella was the one,
they had both fell in Love that Night.
The Dove plucked out there eyes, it was not suprise that the Stepsisters have lost their Sight!!!


B.R.
01/18/2023
The Polish things, they emanate from Poland. These
backward leanings, they’re aft from center. These brackish
waters, they foul my disregard for things clearly.
   I trust my brothers not, they **** my sweet nature. My  sisters
wait to be waited upon. One punch to the throat away from
incapacity they are. These Scandinavian things are
from the Benelux countries baby.
   Once March goes down the tubes I won’t be too sure of winter. The ties that bind me to Polish things are rotting back. My bros. are due for a hand-out, their self-supporting natures have evaporated. If ever there was a time for turtle neck ware that time has passed. My belled bottoms are pinned up following 2 amputations. My terror-cell sympathies during niggardly repasts elude pursuers.
   Trust babies, caked beyond cribs, sprawling & pooling
at distances 3 feet. Anguish & a nun’s broken face. My
ribs are tickled, my ticklers ribbed.
Acme Feb 2020
Earth spinning like a top
    clowns running to stay put
    don't mention the trenches
    and amputations and rats who
    nibble on our numb legs as we
    try to sleep in muck and wonder
    which lucky men will die tonight?
    Let's not talk about it anymore.

— The End —