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The people of Canberra, yes they love it, oh yeah

you see I come here after getting ribbed by *******
And teased by so called friends
When all I wanted was to be treated like a Normy
And, yes I did normal things, like watch footy and exercise
And I also ran around town trying to enjoy being a kid
Yes, I was made to be such an *******, I hated it
Me and my brother played cricket in the park
And these two dudes tried to scare us off
I am too fit for them, but I found one city
Was nothing like that, yes the Canberra crowd were nice to me
The first word a kid I hardly knew said to me, was your like us, man
Because he thought I was cool, to his point of view
And I made more school friends, and I found this so fun
Then, I made a friend who ended up going to the Raiders matches
When they started in 1982, and we had a lot of fun going to those matches
Cheering them on till their first grand final in 1987
And we continued it in 1989 and '91 and '92 and then their last premiership back in 1994, and that was the year that I went down to Mawson, where the Raiders leagues club was, and saw the team come home, and I asked my friend we support the Raiders, how about we support the Cannons, you see we play basketball, how about we watch it, the cannons are playing well, so we supported the Canberra Cannons, who were our local basketball team, yes, we saw players like Herb McEachin and Phil Smyth, and Jamie Kennedy and Andy Campbell, and my friend saw him at a course he did, and Willie Simmons, played for them, as well as the Alabama Slammer, who did a add for Captain snooze, it went, ' the Alabama slammer, through on his pygamas, lying on his bunk dreaming of the slam dunk, yes, Canberra was on the map, but like the Raiders they stopped playing really well, like finals well, and unlike the cannons are no more, but then after the Canberra Kookaburras were popular in Rugby Union in the 80s, I think the tune went like this, kookaburras play in the ACT, merry, merry, kings of the Union field was he, play kookaburras play, and we'll win the Sydney comp, well I think that is how it went, but who cares, because later on we got a stronger team , the ACT Brumbies, they were so cool, they won two cups, but this rugby comp was harder to win, and at the same time, the best Canberra team, who won the most cups, were the Canberra Capitals, who are the women's basketball team, yes, 10 out of 12 premierships, yes they are so cool, well the capitals run I think is over, and the Raiders have been doing well in the under 20s, but last year they did well and were thrashed in the grand final, Canberra looked doomed, untill something happened to Canberra in February 2013, and that was a moment that changed Canberra forever, you see I have been following tbe Major league from the USA, and I drove my friend nuts, you see the whole city of Canberra got behind the Raiders, and the cannons and the capitals and the Brumbies, the kookaburras, and we support our local Aussie rules comp, we have the best local comp in Australia, it went national, yes, that is cool, we made mistakes with the implosion of our old hospital, which killed Katie ******, and we at least haven't got a right wing government, back in the 80s, we had no government, but back to where we're at, in February 2013, Canberra changed, yes this was the time of the Canberra winning the Australian baseball Claxton shield baseball comp, from the wooden spoon, yes Canberra us great, and we are putting some great apartments up, to bring people here to live up to it's aboriginal name, meeting place, you see I met some really nice people at sporting events in Canberra, and I don't want that to change, you see Newcastle dudes don't have a good sports following like the Canberra crowd has, yes maybe they have the Jets, in soccer, and the Newcastle knights, but we have the GWS, yes they play 3 normal season matches in our city, so we are the boys in our wonderful city of Canberra, we support the AFL, and the AFL is the greatest game of all. Newcastle local sports is just Newcastle, ours include a miniature national comp, we have the Kanga cup soccer tournament, which is better than the Newcastle jets, yes we are the mighty Canberra crowd, we are making our city so proud, we have better stuff, like sports to suit all walks of life, as well as having the best flower show in the world, called Floriade, how many flower shows have people performing songs at them the way we do, and February has the Multi cultural festival, so let's celebrate the 100 years of Canberra, we ain't shy, the rest of Australia, just thinks their the best.
The end
Damaré M Jul 2013
It's like a jungle sometimes it make me wonder 
It's like a Forrest sometimes it help me flourish 
It's like a desert sometimes I find myself exerted 
I don't know how to word it, so I gather up a excerpt 
My momma always used to blurt it but since I always heard it , Things didn't make sense until it hurted 
Unjust situations did a service , I can't remember the last time when I was nervous
I tried my hardest not to become heartless 
In poverty stricken and drug infested apartments 
They raised us in the slums 
So we raisins in the sun 
Get to the league then our fathers come and try to bake us when we're done 
Already came from out the oven 
Already clubbing and already loving
Been making mistakes 
Got seasoned without his marinade
He never made us a plate 
Forced to be a renegade 
He never made us feel safe 
We're out running from everything 
Then don't know what to do when we make it on base 
Flour for the chicken
Flowers in the vase 
Gun powder in the smith &
Baking soda for the base 
I can't stand the rain coming through my window and we never had drapes 
Slim fast was our ******* so fiends never got in shape
Rent was only $50
So we never had space 
Halloween we had the mask but we Couldn't afford the cape 
So it was only fly if you sold super weight 
God's gate or cell 5 gate
Was our only escape
No DNA 
But we had to share a sub sandwich 
Waterfall a club soda
That's why we relate 
Dozens of "cousins" 
Saw each other everyday so that's why we debate 
It's like a ocean sometimes it makes me hopeless 
Marco Polo never get played, it's real
We dying by waves of violence 
It's like a battle field sometimes it keeps us crying 
Retaliation celebration 
10 years of frequent, but temporary triumph 
It's like a jungle that's why today I'm humbled 
Try to stay away from trouble 
Lost a lot of brothers, so the ones thats left I muffle 
It's like a jungle with tigers, apes, and snakes 
We pray everyday not to become prey 
It's like a jungle 
Only enlightened by thunder 
The trees help us breathe 
The trees bring a breeze 
But the trees is like a tease 
Disable us to follow our dreams 
We can't see the nearest sea 
So we just hunch by the tree stomp 
It's like a jungle 
At times it keep me thinking how do I keep from sinking 
It's like a jungle sometimes it makes us a believer that we gotta have fever just to meet our diva 
It's like a jungle sometimes it make me crumble because the crumbs feed the hunger 
It's like a agglomerate sometimes I forget when the last time I ate 
It's like a collage eventually I can't picture if I have a future 
It's like a jungle where
Lumberjacks never stumble 
Allow our dense vegetation 
To cloud our inspirations 
We come from jungles 
Get older and just want a happy huddle 
And a warm cuddle 
And finances to bundle 
When we make it through our rubble 
From a jungle 
We wonder 
That's all we can do is wander 
That's all we can do is juggle
That's all we can do; is hustle?
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
well, now you know, the opening sample on the orb's album: the dream, borrows from a prog rock band (Canterbury scene, inc. the soft machine), caravan's winter wine.

i don't want you to think this is a soppy poem,
it's not...
                     it's what defines an autobiographic
oddity, 10 seconds, more or less:
that stretch into infinity and would otherwise be
seen as the atypical tragic event in a person's life;
i had two previous girlfriends
worth noting... that French girl i lost my
virginity to at university is beside the point...
both of these girlfriends were minted...
one was a star in Australia and provided her
dad selling the entertainment business for
a million (she lied about this,
i didn't catch on... should have bagged that girl
into matrimony)... the second, oh boy, the most
memorable was the Russian from
Novosibirsk - with two apartments in St. Petersburg...
dumb me no. 2... should have bagged that girl
to a matrimony also...
she the most memorable, because, thanks to her
i am living as a second self, the twin i never had...
but believe me, this is all based upon supposition,
Ripper Street type investigations (detective work),
and that fact that, like Nietzsche noted:
people aren't telling me anything - so it's based
on guess work... oh how people cradle their
little privacy - and boy, in the realm of:
and he was crucified for our sins... well:
no one mentioned lies... he didn't die for lying...
i have a dual-carriage way of dealing with this:
don't like, and have a **** rather than
getting emotionally attached... that ***** concerning
the person in *** is so ******* ridiculous
i'm about to take out a measuring tape and
measure my genital personality to prove a point...
oh the many white lies that mislead people...
me? i would never want to address people
as Mr. Goldfish, i offensively do believe in
that there are a few intelligent people out there...
two apartments in the centre of St. Petersburg
and studying in England, a Russian?!
you'd have to be minted to do that... so there,
i didn't get reeling in manifesto quickly enough...
but the Russian did try a strategy of entrapment:
faking taking contraceptive pills: darling,
i don't mind the rubber... noop...
the seed already planted, we broke up, i'm
at a different university doing history and part-time
roofing (industrial flat roofs) she calls me up one
night: i'm pregnant...
                                 well this is where a Greek in me
says something about moral relativism...
                she was still a teenager...
  at university,
                              and women have argued about
having the right to do abortions since donkey's years...
i didn't force her, i suggested: maybe that's an option
you would consider? that's how moral relativism works,
it's basically a cauldron, you put
abortion and ****** into it and say it's synonymous,
moral relativism is a case for synonymous judgements...
by the term ****** i envision killing someone:
fully formed, and possessing an inkling into the world...
by abortion i'm envisioning killing something...
       mainly because of the diaper principle:
that thing is mine, it's not fully formed... i'm killing
a part of me: a white tadpole... and in case of the woman:
apologies for ****** that sacred space of your,
i'd be greatly relieved if you got rid of it,
but all of a sudden, contradictory to all the appeals
to the right: she has to have it! what the ****?
that thing is mine in your body, i shove millions
of that existential murk down the toilet when i feel
like it... women just shove empty eggs down the toilet...
but since that's ****** my rights of ever
producing *****... sure... keep it... but you're not
talking about the possibility of the next Beethoven
prior to it gaining **** strength and stop using the
diapers... i thought that teenage pregnancies
were to be avoided, ensuring women are to be educated?
no? back to square one with Abraham and Isaac?
women: perpetually the gimmick of Freud.
oh yeah... wait! **** on me: ever heard of Freudian
geometry? it's the unconscious version of
squares, triangles and circles... everyday objects...
hats... cucumbers... that ****'s for *real
.
once again... this part is speculative...
              the part that isn't is what i already said isn't
about soppy invocations...
              exemplified when i told a "supposed" friend
about it... and he came out with the words:
aw... want a hug and play you the violin?
                    i don't mind abuse, i'd probably eat a 100
trolls for breakfast... they might be whipping me...
what ****** me off more than anything is ridicule...
every single poet or writer will tell you that ridicule
is the most abhorring thing to experience...
                 it's worse than saying a woman is a *****...
believe me... i've been to prostitutes and
later i pass them down the street and they say:
                             that's the devil...
must be doing oral on them, *** included: once again:
there's no person involved: only two objects
with or without lubricants.
                          why did i go in the first place?
university... apparently a paradise for getting laid...
well... apparently not.
                                   at least they were human enough
to accept a small payment and make me feel warm
for a little: fake or not fake... the most beautiful compliments
i ever heard were from prostitutes, esp. that
Ukrainian girl in Poland: saintly depiction?
        well, still quiet eager after all that ***** and
tightly embracing and her words: you're a good human being.
           ****, how to relay back to the original intention?
well, of all the days, today i decided to drink three
beers in a churchyard, lazily on a bench,
                  not mystified by not thinking like Buddha
might have been calling it meditation...
                  sedative was on its way...
   9 years and counting where once a soul-like substance
allowed me to daydream and think whatever i wanted,
most notably: with ease...
                                              and have the full capacity
of my body -
                            but now? that ******* television-static
in my brain, like the meshing of alien d.n.a.
                            (but actually just blood)
            around the synapses of my brain - just like
an x-men prologue sequence...
                  and that's after seeing 5 or so psychiatrists
with an obvious problem: staring them into their eyes
and they were conjuring up their own imaginary
symptoms that i didn't seem to exhibit:
a. good eye contact
b. not biting his nails
c. empathy towards others
d. coherent speech
e. knowing everything about current affairs
f. reading Kierkegaard
                       they ****** off inspecting me after i
told them i go into the woods at night and drink
beer... hello the heart of darkness and apocalypse now,
                they really didn't see the obvious problem,
that ****** television-static like pain in my brain...
            mind you, i exploited it,
   it became an exquisite pain, an almost aristocratic pain,
my vocabulary expanded dramatically,
  and i focused on philosophy -
                               because Σoφια is the name of
   ******       on the mouths of every woman who
    encounters a philosopher: ******* kindred of
                              Oedipus and other bachelor lazy-*****...
true story, that.
                             well, what happened happened
9 years ago... it's not soppy, it's rather idiotic...
but after smoking marijuana anyone can be called an
idiot... a happy idiot... but your critique of surrounding
people and things numbs...
                    three people involved,
  in the beautiful city of Canterbury...
                                     being told that i could experience
a smoked version of l.s.d., aged 21, wouldn't you?
the story was false by the way... but the previous night
a fun night to say the least, old friends from school...
partying, drinking, smoking dope (no, not slang as in
cool in using it, we know the technical names,
i.e. Mary and Juan rather than Joseph) -
                    and yes, the church has nothing on me,
i didn't sign up to baptism, hence i didn't sign
up to confirmation and a third name,
i.e. matthew conrad Olaf <surname>...
                             that's called breaking the bureaucracy
with christianity... i'm redeemed...
                            so we were smoking in the morning
and the Amazonian death-**** was given to
me with the promise of a shorter trip than if i were
to ingest l.s.d., oh ***** me... dumbo's coming...
toked... and the show started...
            it's really strange looking someone in the eyes
when they have just attempted to ****** you...
esp. if they're your childhood friend...
you listened to the muse's origin of symmetry together
among other albums, you fell in love with Iron Maiden
and he sand you over the phone (gay), and you
played happy birthday to him on a guitar after only
you and someone else showed up to celebrate it...
   i slid into a vortex... years later i noticed an advert
investing in the public awareness of someone experiencing
a brain haemorrhage... half the face coming off,
slid to one side...
                      well... in terms of a first-person account
what was happening to me on that sofa 9 years
ago didn't exactly register... it's hard looking
  into the eyes of your would be murderer with that sort
of face... but **** me, the burning...
              moments worth an aeon later i was
shaken, quiet like an epilepsy by what i can only
describe as something with a biblical reference:
         jacob wrestling with an angel...
but in this case i was being shaken back to life,
           such was the strength of the interaction...
standing up, i extended my hand and i saw four
clear divisions as if i was pushing four doors open -
         the other person there?
    a nobody... he came to our school when we were
doing our a-levels... didn't really know him...
        the person i knew? the childhood friend...
first of all: i didn't know what was happening...
second of all: well, there's the new me...
          i'm not rich, suing was not an option,
but i'd know what that would have been like -
humanity isn't exactly Einstein when it comes to
          judging correctly...
i let it go...                                 i did something akin
to the Cain affair... let the ****** go...
                            and he's still out there,
after the event, years later, we met up and went to
an American Head Charge gig -
                          when the song just so you know came
on he was hiding in the toilet, i was downing pints
of beer...
                                            oh my god, that band looks
ruined, they've lost a few band members, i remember
them supporting Rammstein when they were
playing ensemble at the London Arena in the Docklands
,
got chatting to a dustman about the gig outside,
and a few member of a Greek metal band:
         ever heard of Rotting Christ? great band.
sure, he's still out there... and i'm still here...
    ha ha... he's actually a lawyer by now...
the funny side of all this is that... well: imagine being
a lawyer after an unsuccessful ****** attempt
(you have to admit, it would have been exquisite...
but then i had a chemistry, and the police would
have said
Nigel Morgan Jan 2013
In the morning the wind is vicious, tossing vigorously the woodland on the heights above the village. The sky is a hanging of grey and charcoal black bands of cloud. On horseback and in her male attire Zuo Fen is led by the village guide up the steep forest path. She is already questioning the past, the accounts she’s read of the annual transhumance to this remote spot that give no answer to its sudden abandonment. It seems the Emperor made himself incommunicado for the latter part of the third season. The palace inventory shows local provisioning, and the most carefully chosen companions. They also describe how season-by-season the habitation was enlarged in order to accommodate further and different visitors. Poets and musicians were particularly favoured and would accompany the Emperor to select locations to add a delicate resonance of word and sound to the natural world.
​         As the travellers came out of the forest a wilderness of rock and moorland stretched before them, relentlessly upward. The path was now vague and Meng Ning was perplexed at how his guide had brought him across this terrain in the near darkness of the previous afternoon. The ponies often stumbled here and in the high wind he had to stop himself from looking behind to check his Lady’s progress. Eventually the ascent became less precipitous and a clearer path asserted itself, and in the near distance a pile of stones marked the summit. There, Meng Ning alighted to see Zuo Fen walking purposefully beside her horse leading her maid for whom this was an unaccustomed adventure. Together they approached him as he surveyed the panorama that to the west revealed Lake Psumano, a silver thread of water curled between the thick forests.
​        In silence Zuo Fen handed the reins of her pony to Meng Ning and with a signal to the village guide strode off on the descent to Eryi-lou.
 
‘We are to wait here until my Lady is out of sight,’ said Mei Lim’s smiling voice. ‘Then we may go forward.’
 
Mei Lim sat firmly in the saddle, as though assuming command of this small party. This now comprised herself, Meng,Ning and two rough-spoken men from the village each leading a pack-horse of luggage and provisions.  
 
‘You know I travelled as far as Stone Village on my Lady’s visit to the Tai Mountains. I would have gone further but she required me to stay. She is a woman who is in love with the wilderness, who will walk out in any weather to greet it lovingly. You should have no fear for her. She is a strong woman.’
​          Meng Ning nodded, declining to speak, afraid to disturb the rough music of the winds that seemed to press on them from all directions. Such is the journeying spirit, he thought, and looking into the distance realized Zuo Fen and her guide had disappeared from view.
          ​Soon the autumn forest had been regained and Zuo Fen and her guide began the descent to Eryi-lou. The path here was well made and marked at regularly distances with small stone columns. The whirlwind, that had buffeted the travellers since their departure, was now being played out in the highest treetops leaving ground level to echo like a large hall as the trees above swayed, groaned and cracked sharply in the heights. Soon vistas of the lake began to appear. They were still high above, the path frequently winding in steep loops across the hillside. Suddenly they found themselves looking down almost precipitously onto rooftops, a maze of buildings falling in tiers, joined together with walkways and terraces, many invaded now by trees and undergrowth: the Emperor’s summer palace of Eryi-lou.
​          Here, Zuo Fen bade her guide turn back. She would now imagine reclaiming this place of her waking dream, alone. When she felt confident her guide had retreated up the path she removed the pins from her hair, loosened her cloak, took off her stout boots of Yak leather. There would be more later.
 
​Barefoot, she began her descent to the palace eventually finding a staircase to one of the terraces from which she began to survey the palace. She found many of the rooms as she had dreamed them, small guest apartments with open spaces where doors and windows might have been, and hangings of the richest almost translucent silks, torn, faded, some covering the ground. The detritus of twenty autumns had blown through these spaces: plant material had taken root in between the planks of the raised wooden floors. Miraculously, there were rooms almost untouched by nature, just piles of leaves providing a matted covering.
         ​In one room somewhat larger than its surrounding structures Zuo Fen feels a special and continuing presence. A veranda-like structure occupied its lake-facing wall. This room, almost a hall, had been recently swept. There is a faint memory of incense as she comes close to the wooden walls. She paces the area until she feels guided to a spot where perhaps a formal chair has long ago been positioned. From there she can see the leaves but not the trunks of the trees as they swirl about in the continuing wind. A long vista of the silver lake spreads itself across the hall’s panorama. But the space enjoys shelter from the prevailing wind and has a stillness and silence all its own. Here, after removing her cloak, her thick riding trousers, the woolen garments that bound warmth to her, she kneels in her shift, closing her eyes to feel the room, the palace, its surroundings, come close to her all but naked body in its repose.
       ​Losing all sense of time it is only the gentle covering of her shoulders by Mei Lim that wakes her from her reverie.
 
‘Gracious Lady, we are installed in rooms kept for the use of official visitors. The guardian here is a young woman with a small child. She would like to welcome you when you are dressed and have eaten.’
 
And so, being led by her maid, Zuo Fen is taken to a distant suite of rooms suited to the autumn weather. There are recently lit braziers, and fitted doors and windows provide a little protection against the relentless wind and the damp cold. Mei Lim reassembles her lady’s wardrobe, and having dressed her, places a hot infusion into her cold hands. The afternoon light has barely a few hours left, but already the cold deepens. This will be a hard place to spend the night, a palace built for the third season – the summer of the solstice, a time of laughter and of fire, and the phoenix red.
 
Meng Ning is also imagining the palace in its summer dress when to wake at dawn would be witness to the sun flooding the partially cleared forest from its heights. The palace is lit up by vibrant reflections off the lake and the very roofs of the many buildings pulsate and shimmer with the heat of a cloudless day. The women of the palace are deep in slumber, their maids with silent tread reclaiming their ladies’ dignity after a night which may have seen much experimental congress of men and women amidst the subtle music of the qujin, the drinking of local wine, the close inspection and divination of the heavens reflected in the still lake, and the elaborate trading between memories of poetry and folk tale.  Even without such imaginings, to be here, and in the company of the illustrious Zuo Fen is the richest gift in a life otherwise stunted by ceremony and courtly intrigue. Zuo Fen has clearly taken Emperor Wu beyond custom and, though briefly, fashioned moments of love and friendship. To witness this woman at close quarters, this artist of the brush whose selection of characters holds both charm and innocence is wondrous. Even in these cold quarters he is warmed by the thought of her presence and the journey they will make tomorrow along the lake shore – to the Red Slate Path.

( to be continued )
Victor Thorn May 2013
1.**

A horizontal fall
from the high-up slide
made for big kids was not
what I expected as I screamed
“Push me down, Haley!”

Unexpected, too, was the destruction of your wounded butterfly days later–
revenge is sweet, yet unsatisfying.
And then you left for six years,
turning up again as hormones
were in full swing
in our freshman year of high school.

2.

you said



"i'll teach you to love,

just draw nearer to me.

draw nearer to me

and i'll make you mine."



as you



laced up your best heels

put on your best face

and applied another coat

of liquid vanity.



as i


made an effort to


concoct a new way to say

"no"


and


ignore the 
rotting

carcasses of

hearts

that strewed the floor.


i'd seen your kind before


"but losing you would be a chore

my darling detritivore"



i said

3.

focus of a new kind sheds a big difference BIG DIFFERENCE upon your face bright yet shadows consume both it and your body like a prophecy. since when did that happen? so what if it never did? so you came to your senses; perhaps that was it. perhaps the realization of “you sure do know how to pick ‘em” broke you and now you’re left with a twelve-and-one-half-inch phallus in your big box of board games. we hardly speak anymore. i am now your temptress, detritivore and you’ll never escape never escape the howls of agony and desire releasing themselves from your joints your muscles your heart aches for fresh meat and you get it, **** you. you get it daily for viewing pleasure. dear heavens speak of shabby apartments and televisions that don’t work. they never knew how to comfort me; so why should they now? falling down the stairs into the pitch black night irreversible womb child conceived on camera and carried to term on God’s watch. do you remember pushing me down that slide in the second grade? it’s your turn.

4.

Unexpected, too, was the destruction of my wounded memory
of an innocent girl from second grade
now in chains and leather,
used and watched and seen and lusted over and masturbated over,
but for a hefty sum.

And I still see second grade Haley
and we still talk
and we share the occasional cigarette
and we tell of our conquests.
But I am no savior–

5.

Feeling vibrations in my palm is finding decaying matter on the forest floor to eat–
the words they carry are a substitute for nutrition.
The nearest bounty of corn is a thousand miles away,
for God places us here and our placement is the source of life’s cruelty.
And second-grade Victor would happily take a beating
for gas money; desperate detritivore–
feast on decaying matter, get your fill
and one day substance of corn will fill your stomach
and you will hibernate indefinitely.
I didn't find the time in the months I was around you
To ever say, "Hello,"
Or learn your name.
Angela S.
I didn't know it until today.

I didn't know that you were thirty-six until I read the articles about you.
I knew that you were late to choir sometimes,
And you wore shorts even when it was cold.
I didn't know you lived in those apartments until the police were investigating them.
My sister lived so close to there.

I didn't find the time to know you,
Angela S.
But I found the time to judge you.
You stood between seconds and you were a first.
You didn't know your parts very well.
I was annoyed.
It's concert choir, no audition.
I shouldn't have been so bothered.
I'm sorry.

That was the last time I saw you.
I didn't know you had a son until after he found your body.
I knew next to nothing about you until you were shot.
We sang the same music for months.
A woman I've been singing alto with all term was murdered yesterday, and her little boy found her. Last week I was bothered that she sang the wrong line. Now she's dead.
Compelled by calamity's magnet
They loiter and stare as if the house
Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought
Some scandal might any minute ooze
From a smoke-choked closet into light;
No deaths, no prodigious injuries
Glut these hunters after an old meat,
Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies.

Mother Medea in a green smock
Moves humbly as any housewife through
Her ruined apartments, taking stock
Of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery:
Cheated of the pyre and the rack,
The crowd ***** her last tear and turns away.
1244

The Butterfly’s Assumption Gown
In Chrysoprase Apartments hung
This afternoon put on—

How condescending to descend
And be of Buttercups the friend
In a New England Town—
Fa Be O Jan 2013
I was born in a cold land,

The leaves bright orange like the sun

And a dusting of icy dew on wilted grass;

I was born in sanitary white and surgical blues,

Incubated, saved, isolated;

Mamá cried:

In the motherland,

mi Apá would’ve had to choose.

I was born into exile.

I was born to immigrants,

Brown like the dirt

Mis abuelos grow caña in,

Like the leaves, glorious colors past;

I was born foreign.

I was born in Español,

Accented with indigenous words,

Bastardized like our foods and dance;

I was born and placed

At the care of a deer’s eye,

Tied red around my wrist,

A wooden cross,

A brown ******,

A blue-eyed Niño Dios.

I lived in dust for 2 years.

I ran free, in fields of milpa,

In fields of caña,

In zocalos with

Colorful waving paper flags

And statues of generals.

I played with cousins,

Sharing bolis and nieve,

The hot clay burning our feet,

Racing to cool down at the spring.

And then I was brought back for school:

Los gringos van a estudiar,

They whispered, a bit mocking, about me,

4 years old, a girl,

In a place where girls were good for marriage,

University for the rich, ****** folks

Of faraway cities.

I came back to the cold land in spring.

A small barrio of tall broken down buildings,

Tiny apartments that became havens

At the sound of guns at night.

There was no more running around freely,

No more campos, no more town squares.

School was foreign,

There was English to learn,

A struggle to lose the accent,

To make the thick words

Comfortable in my tongue.
1/2/13
In the spirit’s solitary hours
It is lovely to walk in the sun
Along the yellow walls of summer.
Quietly whisper the steps in the grass; yet always sleeps
The son of Pan in the grey marble.

At eventide on the terrace we got drunk on brown wine
The red peach glows under the foliage.
Tender sonata, joyous laughter.

Lovely is this silence of the night.
On the dark plains
We gather with shepherds and the white stars.

When autumn rises
The grove is a sight of sober clarity.
Along the red walls we loiter at ease
And the round eyes follow the flight of birds.
In the evening pale water gathers in the dregs of burial urns.

Heaven celebrates, sitting in bare branches.
In hallowed hands the yeoman carries bread and wine
And fruit ripens in the peace of a sunny chamber.

Oh how stern is the face of the beloved who have taken their passage.
Yet the soul is comforted in righteous meditation.

Overwhelming is the desolated garden‘s secrecy,
As the young novice has wreathed his brow with brown leaves,
His breath inhales icy gold.

The hands touch the antiquity of blueish water
Or in a cold night the sisters’ white cheeks.

In quiet and harmony we walk along a suite of hospitable rooms
Into solitude and the rustling of maple trees,
Where, perhaps, the thrush still sings.

Beautiful is man and emerging from the dark
He marvels as he moves his arms and legs,
And his eyes quietly roll in purple cavities.

At suppertime a stranger loses himself in November’s black destitution;
Under brittle branches he follows a wall covered under leprosy.
Once the holy brother went here,
Engrossed in the tender music of his madness.

Oh how lonely settles the evening-wind.
Dying away a man‘s head droops in the dark of the olive tree.

How shattering is the decline of a family.
This is the hour when the seer’s eyes are filled
With gold as he beholds the stars.

The evening’s descend has muffled the belfry‘s knell in silence;
Among black walls in the public place,
A dead soldier calls for a prayer.

Like a pale angel
The son enters his ancestor’s empty house.

The sisters have traveled far to the pale ancients.
At night, returned from their mournful pilgrimage,
He found them asleep under the columns of the hallway.

Oh hair stained with dung and worms
As his silver feet stepped on it
And on those who died in echoing rooms.

Oh you palms under midnight’s burning rain,
When the servants flogged those tender eyes with nettles,
The hollyhock’s early fruit
Beheld your empty grave in wonder.

Fading moons sail quietly
Over the sheets of the feverish lad,
Into the silence of winter.

At the bank of Kidron a great mind is lost in musing,
Under a tree, the tender cedar,
Stretched out under the father’s blue eyebrows,
Where a shepherd drives his flock to pastures at night.

Or there are screams which escape the sleep;
When an iron angel approaches man in the grove,
The holy man’s flesh melts over burning coals.

Purple wine climbs about the mud-cottage,
Sheaves of faded corn sing;
The buzz of bees; the crane’s flight.
In the evening the souls of the resurrected gather on rocky paths.

Lepers behold their image in dark water;
Or they lift the hemp of their dung soiled attire,
And weep to the soothing wind, as it drifts down from the rosy hill.

Slender maidens ***** their way through the narrow lanes of night;
They hope for the gracious shepherd.
Tenderly, songs ring out from the huts on weekend.

Let the song pay homage to the boy,
To his madness to his white eyebrows and to his passage,
To the decaying corpse, who opened his blue eyes.
Oh how sad is this reunion.

The stairs of madness in black apartments –
The matriarch’s shadow emerged under the open door
When Helian’s soul beheld his image in a rosy mirror;
And from his brow bled snow and leprosy.

The walls extinguished the stars
And the white effigies of light.

From the carpet rise skeletons, escaping their graves,
Fallen crosses sit silent on the hill,
The night’s purple wind is sweet with frankincense.

Oh ye broken eyes over black gaping jaws,
When the grandson in the solitude
Of his tender madness muses over a darker ending,
The blue eyelids of the silent god sink upon him.
Now I'll record my secret vision, impossible sight of the face of God:
It was no dream, I lay broad waking on a fabulous couch in Harlem
having masturbated for no love, and read half naked an open book of Blake
        on my lap
Lo & behold! I was thoughtless and turned a page and gazed on the living
        Sun-flower
and heard a voice, it was Blake's, reciting in earthen measure:
the voice rose out of the page to my secret ear never heard before-
I lifted my eyes to the window, red walls of buildings flashed outside,
        endless sky sad Eternity
sunlight gazing on the world, apartments of Harlem standing in the
        universe--
each brick and cornice stained with intelligence like a vast living face--
the great brain unfolding and brooding in wilderness!--Now speaking
        aloud with Blake's voice--
Love! thou patient presence & bone of the body! Father! thy careful
        watching and waiting over my soul!
My son! My son! the endless ages have remembered me! My son! My son!
        Time howled in anguish in my ear!
My son! My son! my father wept and held me in his dead arms.

                                        
                                        1960
August Feb 2013
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
To see a business with empty windows
The blue building I pass by every day
With the once solid stairs only marked by a paint print
The man in the yellow jacket and the American flag shirt
Even though America is why he is walking on worn down shoes
320 on moffet, dilapidated apartments & hollow doorways
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
The blinking open sign that flickers, only welcoming ghosts
The boy who gets off the bus stop alone, walking by it without a glance
With his back pack strung tiredly over his shoulder
The universal feeling of not fitting in still fresh in his memory
The field of grass, deserted
A cemetery of parts & wheels & headlights & people's once dream machines
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
The lady who lives on 2nd near the sewer drainer
With hoards of stuffed animals waving from inside the windows
As she sits under the awning surrounded by them, smoking a cigarette with trembling fingers
The girl driving with her hands tightly gripping the steering wheel
Grinding her teeth as she watches the people she sees while on the road
Blinks slowly, as she knows home is where she is alone
But she'd rather see this road side sadness then the blank television screen
Nothing is a sadder sight to me
And she screams
As she crashes into a tree
The man in the yellow jacket turns his head
The boy's back pack falls to the ground
The women leaps up, her plush lifeless friends tumbling around her
The building are silent, remorseful
Nothing is a sadder sight to see
Angelica Renee Nov 2013
see I float around society like a plastic bag sometimes
unseen unless someone needs me

and there are so many truths I've seen
about women

these are the undeniable facts:

Beauty: women love beauty. they are consumed by it. it feeds them till they die, clutching stylish cases and well-worn tubes and knuckles bruised by constant forcing, or they sit in darkened obscure corners waiting for a no-name prince to charm them into believing lies, avoiding mirrors along the way.

Intelligence: it's okay to be smart but not so smart that a man feels five inches tall against the length of the word you just uttered with smooth unaffectedness, if you do that he falters, feels as though his life has been false, and then he tells you to stop reading your books. and you do it, because you fear you may lose him. women hide from the monsters of science and math, drown in the seas of history and literature and pretend all the while, giggles in every breath's pause, that they just don't know. because no one wants a woman who can recite Chaucer but can't even press a decent crease or bake a good cherry pie.

Hard Work Ethic: women were born to work. they work to maintain an illusion, they work to get a man, they work to keep him, they work to make him feel superior, they work in cramped cubicles and then in cramped apartments, making them uncramped, and then in cramped bedrooms under cramped sheets, trying to hide their leg cramp so as to not disturb his concentration.

Confidence: women hate other women who are confident. because those women have learned to disregard every lesson from charm school, and everyone else struggles to find the perfect hair flip. secretly, women love another woman with confidence. because it shows them they can be that reckless one day.

Dress: women want the short skirt in the window. but the directions on the tag are as follows:
DO NOT WEAR WHILE DRINKING. DO NOT WEAR IN COLD WEATHER. DO NOT WEAR WITHOUT PANTYHOSE. DO NOT WEAR IF OVER 130 POUNDS. DO NOT WEAR IN THE COMPANY OF DRUNK MEN. DO NOT WEAR TO SPORTING EVENTS. DO NOT WEAR IN THE PRESENCE OF OTHER WOMEN. DRY CLEAN ONLY. women leave the skirt on the hanger.

Strong Personality: women tell other women to be quiet and keep their heads low. that is all they know. when they were little girls they used to shout. then they became teenagers and were taught to whisper when they wanted something. whispers are saved for secrets, lies and things women want.

Competition: women want men. women want other women. women want people. women are told they want men. women fight for men, because they are taught men are the ultimate prize. women win men and are disappointed with the terms and conditions that apply. but it's too late. they've already won. women wonder what they were fighting for in the first place.

Affluent: women wish money didn't matter but when they're counting pennies for every man's dollar it's hard to ignore.

women are told by men their mothers their sisters their teachers their bosses their world

that they are too loud ****** ugly fat hairy ***** loose slutty uptight frigid emotional stoic competitive timid.

women tell other women these things and think their world will love them for it. women love other women, but begin to believe they don't.

biggest problem women have is with a world that thinks they can't handle their own ****.
Patrick Sutphin Jun 2012
I come from a town with no identity.                          
It had one, once, but I think it was                              
uprooted with Shales forest                                            
to make way for outlet malls                                  
and housing complexes.  
Every street, every tree, and every person
was like a wrinkle on an otherwise
unblemished face, marking our
individuality with age and experience.
It’s amazing how fast cosmetic surgery
can destroy the past.
                                            
I hail from the smallest                                                  
large suburban town of our area.                                  
Growing up, we used to know everybody
that lived on our block, and no one was
in short supply of a handshake or hello.
Now, social courtesy ends at the foot
of your door, before you step into the world.
When I was a child, every person had a sense
of purpose, a contribution to the street.

Mrs. Henderson made the best
chocolate chip cookies around, and
all summer long her house was filled
with the smell of melting chocolate
over warm cookie dough, a scent
that would sneak out of her window
in the late afternoons, when you
could still see the sun setting in the sky,
and find its way over to mine. Now,
apartments block the view.

Nick Potts had a key to the private pool,
which was members only,
but every weekend he’d find
a new way to sneak us in.
John Probst owned the pool,
and would sit in the same yellow
and blue striped lawn chair by
the concession stand next to the
diving board, laughing at each
new scheme we conjured up to
help save a few bucks on a
humid summer’s day.

Kyle had a trampoline, that
despite the stupidity of all
nine-year-olds, never saw a
broken bone. Carl had his garden,
bursting with shades of colors
that could only be mirrored by
the burning dusk light.
Duncan had a tree fort,
the Richards, a tire swing.

I never knew how fast the changes
would come. It started small, a simple
lift here, some aging creme there,
but this was just preliminary measures
for botox and nose jobs. As a town,
we soon became an obsession of trends.
Individuality was outdated.
Every driveway had a minivan, every home,
a schitzu and a soccer ball.

A skin graph covered the sun spot
that was Mrs. Henderson.
A face lift cured the sagging skin
of Nick Potts. The pierce
of a needle and flowing
injection of toxins smoothed
the wrinkles that were
Kyle, Carl, and Duncan. In what
seemed like a few hours time, the
town that taught me integrity, respect,
and the value of a hard day’s work,
altered to the point of being unrecognizable.

Manufactured and fake, we’re nothing more
than a shinning porcelain doll straight off
the assembly line, distinctively similar
to all the others that follow. Every layer
of cosmetics cover another part
of our character, another aspect
of our history. We became lost
in the crowd, and in our own way,
faceless.
(Reply of the Pythian Oracle to Philip of Macedon.)


Oh! could LE SAGE’S demon’s gift
  Be realis’d at my desire,
This night my trembling form he’d lift
  To place it on St. Mary’s spire.

Then would, unroof’d, old Granta’s halls,
  Pedantic inmates full display;
Fellows who dream on lawn or stalls,
  The price of venal votes to pay.

Then would I view each rival wight,
  PETTY and PALMERSTON survey;
Who canvass there, with all their might,
  Against the next elective day.

Lo! candidates and voters lie
  All lull’d in sleep, a goodly number!
A race renown’d for piety,
  Whose conscience won’t disturb their slumber.

Lord H—indeed, may not demur;
  Fellows are sage, reflecting men:
They know preferment can occur,
  But very seldom,—now and then.

They know the Chancellor has got
  Some pretty livings in disposal:
Each hopes that one may be his lot,
  And, therefore, smiles on his proposal.

Now from the soporific scene
  I’ll turn mine eye, as night grows later,
To view, unheeded and unseen,
  The studious sons of Alma Mater.

There, in apartments small and damp,
  The candidate for college prizes,
Sits poring by the midnight lamp;
  Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
He surely well deserves to gain them,
  With all the honours of his college,
Who, striving hardly to obtain them,
  Thus seeks unprofitable knowledge:

Who sacrifices hours of rest,
  To scan precisely metres Attic;
Or agitates his anxious breast,
  In solving problems mathematic:

Who reads false quantities in Seale,
  Or puzzles o’er the deep triangle;
Depriv’d of many a wholesome meal;
  In barbarous Latin doom’d to wrangle:

Renouncing every pleasing page,
  From authors of historic use;
Preferring to the letter’d sage,
  The square of the hypothenuse.

Still, harmless are these occupations,
That hurt none but the hapless student,
Compar’d with other recreations,
Which bring together the imprudent;

Whose daring revels shock the sight,
When vice and infamy combine,
When Drunkenness and dice invite,
As every sense is steep’d in wine.

Not so the methodistic crew,
Who plans of reformation lay:
In humble attitude they sue,
And for the sins of others pray:

Forgetting that their pride of spirit,
Their exultation in their trial,
Detracts most largely from the merit
Of all their boasted self-denial.

’Tis morn:—from these I turn my sight:
What scene is this which meets the eye?
A numerous crowd array’d in white,
Across the green in numbers fly.

Loud rings in air the chapel bell;
’Tis hush’d:—what sounds are these I hear?
The *****’s soft celestial swell
Rolls deeply on the listening ear.

To this is join’d the sacred song,
The royal minstrel’s hallow’d strain;
Though he who hears the music long,
Will never wish to hear again.

Our choir would scarcely be excus’d,
E’en as a band of raw beginners;
All mercy, now, must be refus’d
To such a set of croaking sinners.

If David, when his toils were ended,
Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us his psalms had ne’er descended,—
In furious mood he would have tore ’em.

The luckless Israelites, when taken
By some inhuman tyrant’s order,
Were ask’d to sing, by joy forsaken,
On Babylonian river’s border.

Oh! had they sung in notes like these
Inspir’d by stratagem or fear,
They might have set their hearts at ease,
The devil a soul had stay’d to hear.

But if I scribble longer now,
The deuce a soul will stay to read;
My pen is blunt, my ink is low;
’Tis almost time to stop, indeed.

Therefore, farewell, old Granta’s spires!
No more, like Cleofas, I fly;
No more thy theme my Muse inspires:
The reader’s tir’d, and so am I.
Joseph S C Pope Sep 2013
Chop down the city lights of Paranoia.
Cathartic beads of sweat roll
off the horrors of your back
under the saggy breast lamps

in the pitched dreams where the nightmare kids
come to watch you sleep.
           Somersaulting walls made of human tissue,
the love of your life overseas, and everything you say
comes out as water torture on hollow centers of hope.

                        poetry is dead.
                                                  Liars smoke ten packs a day,
social criminals stroll in marathons of perdition
across the rot of post-modern vices,
their feet stomp closer to watching faces under the bed.
                                      'This is a story. A dream!'
Everyone sees the fire under the bed.
Watch-fires earthbound by every word
before it is said,
gagged in envy--brought to glow by spineless atoms.

        Every sexless sun has a beard, a saved flirtation that singes
          the vacuum of today's soul,
                             a dead dream because you didn't pull it from the brink.
No one has a name in poetry. A task. A point. An exit.
                                                  One bed-room apartments locked with pearls
                                                     visible only to soloist dogs.
No sorry for vagueness or shut-mouth or bleeding upwards. The meter is running....
to the pharmacy
because it could be pregnant with all the possibilities.
And the whole amphitheater wants to hear one line, the life changer you brought
--here it is: Forget your name.
Must it be a Test to Love without Cause
Like Dad's Clothes worn un-thinking of Perfection?
This be your Practice despite Facts beknown
Towards way-end your Silence ignores Diction
For One who speaks on-file, eager to Present
Once your Lights dim and return to Normal
Expect Reserved Silence to those you amend,
Played Jester with Clouds and thought you Mortal
Even ID's have Foot-Long Lanyards, Sir
Meaning regardless of Gold or Bronze frame
Remember this for all Intent and for Her
All primmed Apartments connect the same.
This you adjust, according to your need
Her she understands, whatever you please.
#tomdaleytv #tomdaley1994
Cadence Musick Sep 2014
sunday bled down my legs
my petals bloomed
your bitten lips
and the smirks between my thighs
a burning kiss
the bathtub water turned murky
a  basin of sin
cutting up ******* lines
perfect symmetry
****** apartments with molded
carpets
kids with their hair bleached
love disillusions the mind  
   to me that's scarier
than a needle
puncturing veins
and
the long twist of train tracks
on lonely purple nights,
winter bitten cheeks
Brandon Webb Mar 2013
You put your face up right next to mine
and scream out a list of rights I don't have:
the right to make tea in the morning
the right to stay up past 9 pm
to carry mouthwash with me
to use my own soap
to hang my coat in my closet
to spend more than eight hours away from home each day
to change plans when away from you without telling you
(no matter how small the change)
to open my windows or back door without permission
to open the back gate at all
to speak when you are not present

I want to write a ******* autobiography someday
and have more than a chapter
and that chapter ain't even here:
If I sit and think about my life,
I have no real memories with you.
The memories that count are the ones spent away from you

Playing on the playground
of the apartments by the mill with two friends
(both of which are now ******* druggies)
or sitting in the back of his aunt's station wagon
when one of em backs into the mailboxes
(at the age of six)

Building forts in the woods at four corners.
Bonfires, frog catching and golf at Anne's.
Wandering trails while camping with them.

Running through the woods with ubie
building forts from old tires, grass clippings and sticks
and playing endless games of fetch with her.
Some days we'd walk the creek back to the fern grove
some days we'd skip rocks by the "waterfall"
and some days we'd slip under the barbed wire to visit the neighbors.

The old **** lab in Carlsborg
which we labeled as "the barn" since it was one-
had plenty of small passageways that we'd play  hide and seek in.
But some days we'd get bored
so we'd go past the church to the rock quarry and climb the hills
or we'd walk the trail as far as we were willing to go
or climb over the abandoned canopy into the neighboring field
and walk over to visit the horses and goats.

Port Angeles was long walks for me,
trails dark and ominous that always led to the park
or roads that always continued on forever,
until I found that one house that I used as an anchor.
Ryland was born there
So was me, not I, but me, the beginning of ME

Then there was Taylor cutoff-
A mile back in the woods
by a junkyard
and a quarter mile from the Dungeness.
I would walk the river most days,
past the farms near the hatchery,
where the power lines always crackled
and the abandoned barns called my name.
some days I'd take the bus to Sequim, others to PA.

Dabob was a trailer that we packed full of memories-
Pulling hoses up long hills to water small trees.
loading up the truck with wood chips for the yard.
rolling boulders into trees with the tractor.
Taking Ryland to the ER for croup.
And fitting three people into a five by ten room to sleep.
not to mention:
bonfires, fireworks, bobcats, mountain lions, 3 cults and *** farmers

This is the ****** though, Edmonds-
city life, and I'm ******* loving it.
I want to write myself a life, father
and I know where to do it
and how
and it ain't here under your oppression.

Three months and the story changes
Sean Flaherty Jul 2015
[page 1] And it was soon after, that the weekend had ended, and I drove home, only-sort-of-alone. Unclean, happy, not the type-to-convert. I don't mean to end the evening by evening the score. "Better than no one," but beating the billboard, and the broad-side-of-the-barn, and the *****. 

You stole from my sewn lips the secret sentiments, which would scare you. You would have been more than welcome to have just asked. Which is probably why I didn't just ask, after, I mean, [redacted line] I hope someday you see this, hope they read it to you, over me, cold. I want you to know that I am a *******-great-friend. I'm there on those days that you don't 
[page 2] pretend. But I have faith (I have no evidence for faith's power, just a lot-of-it). There'll be space, here, for you, in the end. 

I'll look at you, last night, like I looked to enable. With two-eyes, and no movement, your addiction poking at poisonous salvation. You caught the wordless-stick, so, and subsequently set fire to yourself. This sharing of cigarettes was seen by the Absent-Folk. Jarring, I gathered. "At least," I had thought. 

At least, at that point, he, stood-up, stumbled away. "*******." Am I sure? No? "No." Neither bad blood, nor enough time-spent-forgetting my bleeding, my beaurocracy, or your backpacking abroad. I mumble, and I'm bumbling now, but before... I bet... that boy's been broken. And his riled-up "Ryan!" rang my [page 3] soul. My ever-loving soul! My non-existent, unconvincing, numbed-and-listless, inner-business! And on the porch, in the mourning, I wished him, dishonest, and shaved off his ***** hair. 

And on that porch, 'round 9 A.M., the band was packing up. Personally? "People-watchin'." Probably should check that they're actually... even... there. Probably should hear the percussionist explain rhythm, again. I can't tell if it's in seven-eight or three-four. I'll scoop up all your passion, as it spills out through the doors. Not isolated, all-four! Volume-set. Vicariously, sailing very... south (towards New Orleans, again) leaves in the river, collected for the raft, stacked neatly in the Pile. Vitamins, from the Oldest-Living-star, absorbed through skin, and eardrums.

[page 4] Stuck on the surprise of "****-function?" More surprised the ****-function wasn't ******? "No?" Not-even-sort-of. Not even worth it, with most of my words! "Oh, not including you. You let your ears be lopped-off, by my lamenting. You look like a love I could lose to a friend. I enjoy the loss, for a cause, since, if you're always right, you can never be wrong."

And in my acknowledgement
of my ignorance I become
more powerful than I'd ever 
need be poetic.


Not that my mistress numbered amongst my lamentings. Alas, "merely-explaining." 

"Oi, navigate!" Alas, "it's implicit." Therein's your mistake. [page 5] Implicit implies! I'll sooner strip-search a subject for intentions, ulterior motives remaining unmentioned (inspired, I'd reckon, by the pills I shouldn't chew, and the jokes I should stop making). My unfocused inertia interferes with my ability to infer. 

And if you're still here, you're fantastic. And I find you fascinating. And, I found, you were following. My sorries were useless, imagined-kindred-lies. I'm sorry I had to go and "color it pink." But, I'll copy this page down for you, if you'd save it? The buffer'd seemed beautous up'till I blew it. Shouldn't inquire after you, should I? If I'm still thinking on it, should I ink-it-all out? What was your name, after all? 

[page 6] Was it really an accident, "or'd work seem like hell?" [I've been checking out apartments down there myself.] My shell was left-stinking-up the old Durango. But any newly-blazed-trail leads me "back to the 'co." A larger, sturdy, empty, circle-home, with an unidentifiable paint job, and thrusters that are supposedly-designed to fall back towards earth, and incinerate *(CAUTION: FALLING FIRE). *
"I'm pretty sure that verse is... It's just awesome." One of my best? "It's just awesome!" Okay! I'll remember, to remind you, that I've said the ****-I-say, spent, sped, speeding, smoked-out, and smoking-you-up. Spreading myself thin, like Communion-wafers and sticky, like reunions. 
[page 7] Saying you're glad I came, saying you're glad I came, saying you're glad I came. 

Someone snuck up with a secret. I'd seen nothing-not-standard. Even, in your snatching a spider, from my hands, and moving toward mundane mockeries, meandering, and making-my-year with a yawn. Simultaneously, I heard a sharp hiss, as someone had slowly let the air out of innocence. Somehow, rendering me speechless. Well, without respect to the "Whoa!!!" Spit's still not-red-yet. "Skeletal." Said-right. I suppose if I think hard, you'd screamed adjacently. I suppose I've never suggested a co-operative cackling. You're with it, right? You're with it, you're with me, and "you're my people." You're going to have a good time. You should know, I should've too, but attitude's [page 8] a fiction. An answer-tricked, alive, unknown. 

As a species we suffer, from seeing something done, and wanting nothing else. I'm on page eight, and ready, perenially-crushed into next-generation-dirt, but there, nonetheless. 

Well, "either way," even without you, even with her, even-in-spite-of-her, always because of him. "Always loved him, almost-******-her." Wish: I'd kissed Larry, too. Wish: she'd never married you. Wishing-dry, and diamond-winged, cursed voice, bumped up some orange change to the counter, and then off of it. More expensive than I'd have guessed. Self-consumed and best-dressed. Not rushing in, but wondering, about my-time-left. "And if death squashed potential, was it ******, or theft?" Only [page 9] if---I can look, and---wait, I have enough left, yeah, here. "Thanks, I got you back when I get some-of-my-own." Very sweet-air-tonight. "Mad, I missed the show." All good vibes.

[page 10]
Regal lions, turned house-felines,
in the cave, with so-loved-Dan. 
Thank goodness for the better ones. Thank
goodness for my friends. 

Often, only reasons to stand 
up, withholding coughs and stretching.
Even if you can't interpret all my 
fourth-dimension etchings. 
[page 11]
Sought to state the timeline, as
I'm not strung-on-the-plan. 
And, almost, every human, with
a Facebook, has a band.

There'll always be peripheries 
and, people on the side-
lines, and people craving
air-time, and people, deserving that time. 

All-white eyes, fall back, in 
waste-of-times, and
beer-soaked-pasts. For
the amount they seem to 
smile, you would be 
thinking, "this could last."

[page 12]
"Alas," this feels like the end. I feel like I'm leaving them. Slowly. Silently. The Shadow, to whom Paul'd refer, trying to stitch-himself to my town-skipping, sans-sunlight.
A party, retold, per usual
~~
This afternoon wears the dark Shirt
After demonstration of the moon,
End of the waiting of pied crested cuckoo,
I did not end

A little bits of interval,
Blinking the distant Stars
My friend could count,
very romantic,
In me cast the shadow

Her beloved lives outdoors,
All the apartments of the mind has rented
Taken from the first floor up to twelve
I did not

I saw the race of cars on the street,
Standing at corner of the roof
When hunger the fingernails,
Subconsciously
Playing an illusion of gravity

This time the drone of insects,
Occasionally shout of bull frog
In fresh water of the rainy season,
Breeding multiply
Nature of the Nature

Cut off the yarn, the kite ran out of the sky
In the Kans forest,
The shadows of white clouds,
very Absurdly,
I could not even catch you  

In the body of mind,
Emptiness came home
Lost days song come up from the deep sea
In the silence the sound of sighs

Sleepless night as the rhythm of the strange poem
While the star drops in front of a traveler
Even though when my time has gone
Still could not understand the unknown poetry
~~
@Musfiq us shaleheen
In the cloudy evenings with strong hints of rain
You heard them once and you heard them again
The air would rend with their cacophony
The torrents would send them in ecstatic glee.
Even a few years back you could find them around
The harbinger of monsoon with harsh croaking sound
On your yard and garden in quite large packs
Frolicking for insects, the great jumping Jacks.
They scoured the marshland in search for food
Calling in monotone and setting you to brood
With your mind gnawed by the incessant rains
That rattled your thoughts and the glass window panes.
But then lands were devoured by the human sharks
Soon disappeared open spaces and parks
Came up apartments and rows of house
Urban growth you accept without grouse.
Now in the lonely evenings with fair hints of rain
The rains will be back but you won’t hear them again
Their habitats are gone there aren’t left any bogs
And with these are gone your neighborhood frogs.
Kyle Kulseth Jun 2016
Bills are scheming with a lightweight check
               again.
Swear to God they must by
         best of friends.
And now I'm sitting solo on my couch
               again
with these 4 walls.
They've become parenthetic.

It's the same everywhere,
               I know.
Same for my friends.
'Cuz the loan checks that we're writing won't
          pay dividends.
We majored in Assumptions,
tossed our caps and
               then
we found new meanings
for what's copasetic.

Now it's easy...
too **** easy...
So easy...
It's too easy.

To wander these same neighborhoods
and stay in tiny, ****** apartments
when the loose ends of your 20s tangle
and you're tied to where you've always been.

And I'll never ask for
          FOR ANYONE'S HELP.
But I still can't take
          CARE OF MYSELF.
So I'll
          COOK MY DINNERS
     ON THESE BURNING BILLS
and laugh my way to the bank
so they can repossess my smile.

Days keep blurring through to nightlight gleams,
               I know
time is racing past but
      thoughts are slowed.
And I'll be sitting pretty on my couch
               alone
inside 4 walls
because habits are a home.

It's the same everywhere,
               I know.
Same for us all.
Late nights and lame jokes we're making
          push back walls.
We majored in Assumptions,
tossed our caps and
               all
we found were new ways
to be pathetic.

But it's easy...
just too easy...
So easy...
It's too easy.

To stay in soured relationships,
stay still in tiny, ****** apartments
when the low points of your paychecks dangle
while you're trying to climb as high as rent.

And we couldn't be in
          ANY WORSE HEALTH.
And we couldn't be less
          FAIR TO OURSELVES
but we'll keep on keeping
like it's copasetic

And we'll never ask for
          ANYONE'S HELP.
Though we still can't take
          CARE OF OURSELVES.
So we'll
          COOK PLATES OF CROW
          ON OUR BURNING BILLS
and laugh our way downtown
where we can reassess our smiles.
To my old School Teacher and a historybook….

At primary school, I must have been  10 or 11 years old as I saw an image on the page of a history book.
A map of ancient  Mesopotamia.
….
From that moment on I had the book with the map right in front of me every day as to get power from the image of the Land of the Two Rivers.
I was a wallflower….living in an almost autistic little world of my own…
My teacher knew I was unlike the others, so much different from all other  pupils....
He knew about my thing with 'Mesopotamia'.
He knew  about all my fantastic, crazy dreams, my drawings and my incredible stories...they were my  only way to escape all the daily misery ....

He knew how my parents neglected me at home, my  ferocious dad- always drunk with liquor  and my hostile mother  whom I seemed to annoy every single minute of her life….

And defendlessly bullied day by day in classroom by the other kids.
He knew so very well how I used to escape in my dreams of remote, imaginary worlds…and how I felt protected by  him, my teacher and  by that old history book as it laid just in front of me on my desk….open on the page with the map....

And now,  as years have passed by...

The school has vanished long ago, the old school building was demolished, as a matter of fact replaced by apartments and a parking lot….
My beloved teacher has passed away years ago and the book with the map has gone too...
But the precious, dear  memory is still here….
I will cherish it for as long as I live....
Kyle Kulseth Sep 2022
Remember, one Summer,
street was closed for construction
We'd careen through the roads
near each other's homes.
Wheeling through dreams on our bikes
in the swelter
we'd reach for the sky 'neath the cottonwoods'
dome.

Some nights, I still walk through those
baseball glove hours--
those sweat-smelling days
                                       and
those Kool-Aid stain weeks.
And I can still feel that
pubescent laughter
which lived in my chest
                                       and
still pounds for release.

I've leased some apartments
and filed my taxes.
I've broken some promises
                                        and
           I've been destroyed
And I've been rebuilt, but never rebranded
                            Those
                Summer time sunsets
               tattooed on my sinews,
              they just wouldn't have it.
I walk around my hundred person hot tub party
and I
cannot feel anything
crawling through my veins alcohol takes over
alone in my yellow living room full of people

\

The girls from the local apartments are here
they arrive in groups of three
five
six
sometimes in long trains of sixteen
I try not to **** my pants with laughter
as I hug and greet each one as they grace my home
I never thought I would be this person
this tongue tied host

\

the felons are here talking about their latest stints in jail
the Olympian is talking about how he walked next to Lebron James at the opening ceremony
the musicians are serenading a girl that does not want to hear it
plastic bags have been placed over the smoke alarms
the marine is talking about killing in the desert
leaning on the northward wall I take a long drag of my blunt trying to look aloofly attractive
, but failing miserably at the act
until she walked up to me
red leather jacket
skin so soft
binding black dress
I liberated her from it and she kissed me
Kissing her back emptied my inhibitions and the morning after: when I found out he was in love with her and I had slept with her; I felt alone all over again
She ran when this was spoken
Me and him fought with our fists
nothing got resolved
all of a sudden
I feel isolation again
just like the party
leaning on the northward wall
having made thirty conversations
none of which compel me
finally leaving me to the world
that exists in my head
THE ONE I CONTROL

\

I have this negative kick back
whenever I feel something going too nice
I just want to be in my room
alone
with a computer
books
marijuana
a chair
pen
paper
precious paradise
I want to run
tear my flesh off my chest
rip into a heavy metal howl
then have blasting music come in
come in from every corner of the room
the bass tones would bounce from the corners
the high tones would bounce of the walls and refract rapidly
and I would be gone
now wondering
what my position is to where they stand

\

What worlds we can mentally create
and which do we want to step into
Sometimes the ability is strong on Tuesdays but not on Thursdays
Why the inconsistency?
I sometimes throw these parties, and I have no idea what to do during them.
JJ Hutton Apr 2015
The slam poet in cords, in denim,
rambles from neon beer haven
to flybuzz brothel, cracking quiet
jokes about soup to shiny junebugs
in the relentless moonlight.
One hundred dollars in thirty-five bills
slowly retreat from wallet
toward water-cut whiskey.
He’s got a chapbook widely
available at frozen yogurt shops
across the metro; he’s got a
tour in the works, tri-county,
every middle school from
Shawnee to Seminole; he’s
got a collection of ex-girlfriends,
made up almost entirely of wizened lesbians;
he’s got an MFA from UNC Wilmington,
and he shouts this more than speaks this
from his treacherous barstool to the sleepy bartender.
One of the girls, she takes him upstairs,
and to her he says, Your freckles—islands
in the sea of your milk-white skin.

The night passes, warehouses are razed,
and he watches the loft apartments emerge.
The food trucks come. He parks beside them,
typing poems made to order out of his trunk. The
money flows in, crumpled and sweaty and
in one-dollar denominations. The Old Fashions
transfigure into Old English. And in his pocket
thesaurus he looks for a word. It’s not vagrant,
nor vagabond. It’s not homeless, nor wayward.
He lies in the long shadow of a Midwestern sunset,
starved and shaking. Up from the blackened
city shrubs comes an indifferent breeze and
just as he thinks the word Pauper, he dies one
on the corner of 23rd and Western.
September Apr 2014
I think of you. Your ******-touch that crosses my eyelids
with chlamydia fingernails accenting in all the
wrong places. The white powder trail leading like a
highway to your right nostril—the unemployment rate
like a dropped lit cigarette in the ******* apartments available. I think of you.
I think of you.
I thought of you.
I want nothing more than to be done with you.
Written about my hometown, Powell River.
Looking heavenward, I see only the earth.
The stars align and the planets turn,
But what of the holy?

Archangels sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
And the collared cherubim bleed into the rainswept gutters
Like cut dogs in cardboard boxes by the highways of New York,
Or the roadsides of back-alley Brooklyn or Paterson,
Where the demonic masses lie naked in the streets,
Their souls bared raw to heaven
And their hair as messy as sidestreet dumpsters.

The misted rain fogs on the busted double glazing,
The bare limbed trees outside fallen victim to a long winter
And a late spring.
The air that blows through the streets of these mundane cul-de-sacs
Has passed through the lungs of cancerous dodgers
In those hell-indulgent cities,
Where children find their kicks by freerunning
Across buildings of bricks made from c-grades,
Or by standing atop high-rises in the grey wind,
And biting their tongues only to feel their own consciousness
Burrowing into them
Like parasites from the condemning schoolhouses or university halls.

You’re alone when your skies turn grey,
And the rain falls with all the purposeful intent of a neon god.
You’re alone when your smashed milk bottles and broken plates
Are like music on those drug-dampened dawns,
You’re alone when your cold, ash-stippled roof gardens
Are your only way to heaven,
You’re alone when your fingers are cut on your own writing
And you are dizzy from spinning yourself sick
Alone in your splintered art lofts.

Your stars are misaligned and your planets need engine grease to turn,
And you sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
But you still look heavenward.
You see your madness in the same silver moon
That compels the tide and transfixes wolves,
You recognise yourself in newspaper clippings proclaiming ******,
You acknowledge your expression in broken syringes
And powder remnants
On the glass-topped coffee tables of water-dripping apartments,
You feel your heartbeat in the gasolined engines
Of stuttering Cadillacs
And taste your own warm lifeblood in the burgers of roadside diners.

You see cosmological galaxies bursting like Van Goghs,
Horrible, bitter-cold starstorms underneath white skies,
Raindrop-dripping garden leaves in shrubberies and verges
And earthy rockeries,
You dream of enlightened, ***-smoking boys in beat-up trailers
And the cluttered box rooms of sky-high apartments,
Of screeching atop stone-cragged mountains of green in highlands,
Of bell-rung harbours in the white seaside towns of England,
Of the salt-chapped lips of fisherwives
And the bone-skinny children of sailors,
Of visionary angels in stained glass cathedrals,
Of the cobbled thoroughfares of lamplit cafes in a Parisian purgatory.

And yet you lie naked on floors,
You lie high on floors and let visions spill from your hands
Like the whiskey you drink.
You are under us now,
Under the earth like meat sacks.
But your vision lives on
In every piece of self-indulgent fuckery written for you,
In every copy of your collected works
Or your novels.

Seek,
Live,
****,
Die.
For you are immortal, in the end.
**** ending, but endings are hard.
Elizabeth Aug 2014
I want to free fall into the Mariana Trench.
I want to watch the world become darker and darker till light is not in the dictionary.
Forms of life will become less distinguishable with every meter.
Motel rooms and apartments litter the crevice's walls-"low" income housing-
Soup kitchens begin to occur less frequently-
Replacing them are drug houses and grimy gas stations with metal bars for windows.
Every creature notices my existence.
They dart their eyes just too much,
And I know they suspect that I came here to sleep. To be at peace with myself again.
To watch them, to hear them, to wander them.
In my mind, seconds melt like ice cream cones in July.
Minutes cut through the silence unnoticeably.
Time slips underneath me as the rug is pulled out from my feet and over my eyes,
And it covers my mind.
I remember nothing of past events,
They told me to leave all behind.


As the day grows darker into nothing but here and now,
My skin turns blue. I am the ocean in this divide of magnetic silence.
I am the fish who struggle to find meaning for themselves.
I am time which does not exist here.
I am the water whose stagnancy sinks me deeper into earth and beings of past eons.
My hair becomes the nutrients, the seaweed and algae that provide for the citizens of this primitive paradise.
My eyes are now seashells which house these forgotten creatures.
My arms stretch out towards surface and harden into coral shoots, but my mind is rooted into sea floor basalt and sand.
I will never leave.


                   An eel approaches me.

He welcomes me with a warm embrace too far up my body.
Not an under-the-arms hug,
A beating, lively hug around the neck.
It takes my breath away,
And so I cannot help but gasp with excitement,

And I find my peace.
I hate the city
How you can't see the stars in the sky
How hopes seem to die
How life is a swindlers mind
It's not that the stars aren't there
They just fell, burned out, hidden in apartments
They forgot their worth and so forget to twinkle
Like a black hole
The city swallows every star
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.how else? with a variety of histories clinging to the focus and exerting the stamina as coordinator? there's the historiology of Darwinism, there's the historiology of the Big Bang theory (with "god" as a, end of sentence "after-thought", dot, , there's the historiology of scholastic efforts of the study of history of history, then there's the personal history of the individual: as nostalgia, then there's the historiology of journalism... then there's the historiology of your immediate predecessors... at what exact point, are you supposed to begin with, to create a rational creature? i suppose the easiest answer is... ? to have children... and construct a shadow, to hide all these focal points of genesis... never mind the historiological study via the biblical narrative, or archeological historiology; so, as you can see? time is not exactly the replica of space, a beginning a present a past... space is not three-dimensional outside this atmosphere of the grand Orb... because all scientists know that... this, supposed motivational claim of... "thinking" outside, "the" box... at the end... there's no "box" to begin with!

such a recurrent thought,
it stalks me like a shadow,
but i just... never seem to be rid of it...
i was 21, she was 18...
love...
                love...

but an unhinged desire for death
to boot,

******* her for 7 hours one night
in St. Petersburg...
didn't really matter...

a vague similarity to
incubating a cushion...

there was no accident...
if only talk took the place of telling lies...

i could have explored
the latex ***** *** **** outside
the realm of a ******...

sure, i write about Hebrew
theories in terms of phonetics...
but i could never be circumcised...
a caduceus of protruding veins
envelop my *******...
so... no mushroom head
of a phallus to boot...
i'd bleed out...

               but was it so bad of me
to suggest an abortion to
a teenager?
            would she still possess
a masters degree?

she married later,
then "divorced" her husband
and i met her new boyfriend,
when i randomly traveled
back to Edinburgh,
and watched her playing
video games with a slashes
hand...

no... not at the wrists...
along the veins,
from the inner side of the elbow
right down to the wrist...

my ex, my one true decency of
womanhood once said
to me: stop trying to save
these women,
to which i should have replied:
i'm not! i'm trying to
save myself!

sometimes the night creeps in,
and i think of the 21 year old me...
she, taking contraceptive pills,
then stopping,
and then, becoming
pregnant... or at least that's
what it sounded like:

matt, i think i'm pregnant...
it didn't register that well
while on a construction site...
industrial roofing never really
does give you the luxury of
pondering...
i was either about to move
some canadian tar into the boiler,
or cut up a roll of mineral felt,
or transfer some insulation...

she came from a Novosibirsk
oligarchy,
two apartments in St. Petersburg,
one in Moscow,
a mansion in Novosibirsk,
etc. etc....

     just left uni, and was doing
what any son of a manual laborer does,
being utilized in his father's
profession...

but it's not like i could afford
to give her what she expected...
a flat in central Edinburgh...
i might have said:
you might think about getting
an abortion /
you know what you have to
do? get an abortion...

            21?! seriously?
so i'm supposed to drop a job
in London?
the only sort of job i could
get out of uni?
a job i... to be honest...
yes, it was hard... but i enjoyed it!
it would have been a job
that would cover the years
my father went "missing",
from 4 through to 8...

but this Russian lass wouldn't
ever move in with her in-laws,
or to the outskirts for that
matter...

plus... what happened later?
she married...
supposedly divorced,
and there, i met her new boyfriend...

to be honest...
i don't even know if
there was ever a child to begin with...

see...
  hmm...
  the existence of god is not so much
an issue of me that serves
the diligence of plating up a proof...
i have too many personal
certainties in my own life,
to give the concept of god
the "benefit of the doubt"...

agnostics doubt a god,
atheists deny a god...
  big difference...
         i can't do either...
i know so little of my personal life
sometimes, if not all the time,
that... at least:
there's this coordinate
i can focus on...

as ever... it's not the freedom
of speech that bothers me...
i'm more inclined to serve the purpose:
give me the freedom
to think, from what i've said...

and what i have to say?
is found in the comment section...
not here... this is me...
thinking "aloud"...
don't come here expecting me
to be found talking,
you'll only receive a reply
of keyboard clicking...

i can think of a deity,
but, sure as ****: can't pray to one...

deus est cogitatio,
                    non est sermo
:

god is thought,
                         isn't talk.

wow... i didn't even shed a tear
writing this...
ah...
               when i once played
my muse... my ex-girlfriend's
younger sister the song
solitude by black sabbath,
and then we washed the dishes together...
it's playing now...
and it's raining...

    a pristine English October.

a conundrum question...
did i chose wisely?
i didn't chose wisely at all...
i made a post-existentialist gamble...
i gambled...
   i simply... gambled...
  although as aversive i am
to casual gambling... on horses...
dogs... football matches...
i made but one gamble,
the result of which,
is confined to me writing, this.
We had snowflake symphonies,
And foreplay arguments-
So long as we both shall live;
So long as we both shall live.

We had silverware tympanies,
In tiny apartments-
So long as we both shall live;
So long as we both shall live.

We argued every numbered day,
But we could never stay away-
So long as we both shall live;
So long as we both shall live.

We watched as love stretched out his wings,
We listened just to hear him sing-
For love, he's brought us every thing;
So long as we both shall live.

— The End —