"arbitrary" poems
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
311.4k
Do I relate to the post-postmodern
True-life voodoo incomes are hard-earned
If I put a hyphen between words
Does that spawn a new one like lovebirds
Isn't love the same word that I saw
Don't crows live like bandits and outlaws
Don't they have the outlook of bourgeois
Carry stolen crackers in their claws
There's no change that I couldn't change
Every change that I change always stays the same
I wanna sing with a slingshot serenade
I wanna donate change to a masquerade
I wanna die while I'm in the spotlight
I want my death to inspire a rewrite
I want to blur the lines of insight
I want to make them think that I'm their height
So give me all your red green yellow blue
If you can find a pool then I'll refract with you
You're a mirage and your favorite color's see-through
You're my fata morgana from this point of view
Are there any words for my freakshow feelings
Isn't sugarcoated terminology appealing
Wouldn't it be easier to represent the meaning
Of a hard to swallow concept with an arbitrary ceiling
Cryptic cultish crease in the catalog
Paranoia backtrack to analog
I can run much faster than I can jog
Magic circle summoning Chernobog
I can break the barrier of sound and space
With these essential elemental explanations in your face
But it doesn't matter everything I say will go to waste
Because the power of the mind is putting power out of place
Hindsight reflecting, teenagers texting
Late to the punch with the big money flexing
Let's settle this with a match in the ring
Or a match to the rope of a cannon firing
I wanna die while I'm in the spotlight
I want my death to inspire a rewrite
I want to blur the lines of insight
I want to make them think that I'm their height
I wanna hypnotize and paralyze
I wanna make them think that I'm their size
I wanna break their spirits drink their blood
I wanna **** their souls I wanna **** them good
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 7:58 PM UTC
There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.
It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.
Jan 19, 2017
Jan 19, 2017 at 4:40 AM UTC
That got your attention
Didn't it?
Even though I am a stranger
Who couldn't possibly know it to be true
And worth is subjective
Arbitrary
Those who know you would disagree
And point out your merits
And you would weigh yourself
To realise that not all parts are equal
Who am I to say such things?
And yet you take the time to read it
Reread, incase you misread
In reading you contemplate it's truth
You are my puppet, and me your puppeteer
How could you be such a sheep!
Why are you amused?
Why does insult carry more meaning than praise?
It's easy to hurt.
Sticks and stones may break your bones
But words can make you think you deserved it.
We are social beings and so
We look for validation
But insult stands out
It leaves a branded mark in our brains
And so we spotlight it
Unfairly
Unjustly
It's easy to be sad.
But it's fulfilling to be happy.
Being positive is hard
But it's worth it in the end.
How could I possibly know?
I couldn't.
But I do.
And soon you will too.
What are you doing now?
You are reading!
Now you are smiling.
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 9:11 PM UTC
Most days, you're not a woman developer,
you're a developer.
You work just as hard,
You (try to) talk just as fast
You keep your feelings under the surface (barely)
Actually, scratch that
You're always a woman developer.
you're just so used to internalizing these habits
Trying to have confidence in your skills
despite the impostor syndrome pulling you down each time slowly, like quicksand
Trying to make up for the confidence you never had
compared to someone who always had it all
Trying to not cry in the kitchen because god who
is allowed to have feelings
Trying not to talk about men who made you uncomfortable because oh my god
for the fact that people call women overreacting
most men seem to make every little statement about them, have you noticed?
oh wow, isn't this just reverse sexism?
oh wow, can I even talk to women?
Being so vocal about being queer and Indian but if you make
one noise
one sound
one phrase
about your experience as a woman
because in such welcoming company you subconsciously thought why not
You let down your guard
But
There goes the shattered glass as the topic of gender-based discrimination is finally broached
There goes the thing nobody ever talks about
There starts the debate you did not want to participate in
"Oh wow you're so harsh to these guys"
"We were just slamming what they were doing, you slammed their actual personality wow"
"I just said they sounded like a brogrammer"
"sure if you say so"
"Isn't that just an arbitrary description"
How do you explain
How do you describe every nuanced experience about
Every male in your life
who have been exactly like this to you
How do you explain the light discrimination
The harsh discrimination
The systemic problem as a whole
How can you condense all this into a workplace environment talk
Where you don't usually talk about this?
Where you don't know if you can actually talk about this
Where you know that you ultimately don't want to talk about this
cuz how can you explain these feelings that they can never understand
You shut up and move on with coding.
But inside, you're conflicted with ideas of presentations to express the fact, or never speak about this again
Because in the end,
You're just a developer, not a woman developer to them.
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 10:42 AM UTC
It was an arbitrary day
at the arboretum
the ferns were all wondering why
a rash of rogue rhododendrons
were roughing up the azaleas
while mighty magnolias stood meekly by
A patch of tiny cyclamen giggled girlishly
while witch hazels waved green wands
and the willows wrung their hands
and wept and wept
'cause they knew what was really going on
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 1:19 PM UTC
You see me as the bacteria
And yourself as the antibiotic
I see you across the cafeteria
Acting psychotic
Because of what I find ******
You treat me like I'm toxic
But you're seen as normal
So I hide beneath the coral
To avoid your aggression
That will teach me a lesson
About correctly guessing
Where your fists will go next
You tell me I want it like ***
This is your way to flex
To show you have an edge
You single out the marginalized
There's no way you'll hedge
When you have harm in your eyes
And then use charm as a disguise
To make me cry over spilt milk
Because I am not of your ilk
For I am as soft as silk
Like the sheets I want to roll in with you
Instead you shoved my face into poo
As my ***** grew
I think of killing myself
With my gun
When I think of filling myself
With your ***
While pretending I'm your son
And swallowing you like gum
Those are my ideas of fun
Yours is to tell me to run
From your intensely penetrating fists
That make me regret my penetrating wish
As you brandish the weapon
From the movie Inception
That launches you into my dreams
Giving my thoughts a singular theme
As my mouth continually screams
I was born on the wrong team
You wanted to exhibit your power
In this seemingly arbitrary hour
So you broke my nose
To show off for your hoes
An off the cuff
Attempt to be tough
But I found it deeply affecting
When I could feel your hatred injecting
Making me wonder if I'd ever be free
After I saw the only ending I could see
You move to strike me again
This time I have my mac 10
That I brought to school
For a one sided duel
You changed the trajectory of my life
By changing the trajectory of my bullets
You taught me about strife
You taught me how power is the coolest
You taught me to move on to your friends
Their lives I must remember to end
This is the message I'm choosing to send
When they sat back and watched the hate
Like it was 1938
I lost my sympathy
After being treated differently
And gained a ruthless anger
That turned me into a stranger
So I let the automatic gun spray
Faster than they could pray
For their hoots and hollers
I shoot their collars
Creating shade in the halls
That I make when they fall
The feeling goes to my *****
I become strangely intoxicated
By the death of those who hated
So I go back to your dead body
And do what you felt was so naughty
And now there is no one even around for you to tell
That I ****** your corpse while you watched from Hell
Jan 3, 2018
Jan 3, 2018 at 12:18 AM UTC
She captioned his heart like she captioned
her own pictures of herself:
seemingly profound but obvious
and unrelated to whatever
touch-screen-camera-phone-app filter she used
to unshade her blackness,
his blackness,
their blackness; with digital
skin-lightening cream.
As if to be dark was a sin.
And so she edited herself
to forgive herself.
Because Jesus had eyes the colour of her contact lenses.
Blue.
Because to be holy is to be arbitrary.
Because to caption his heart like she captioned herself
was easier than to just ask for his soul
through a no make-up selfie.
Or whatever else she thinks is actually her,
but still isn't.
Sep 29, 2014
Sep 29, 2014 at 5:30 PM UTC
~
*She stands on the roof of the world, a ship in a bottle. She likes to wave at passing boats, inviting 120 volts to raise their sails.
Words unbosomed -- her attempt of blotting out the sun and those bloodletting habits.
Her eyelids say, "Only the disquieting muses have time for me." So she writes like an umbrella, shading reality; remembering pluck and luck stories about bumblebees, lovingly wrapped in Tiffany-blue ribbon and paper.
Father used to solve her every contemplation. Now indecisiveness in what she asks. Now indecisiveness in arbitrary tasks.
And she and her negative capability are the last two awake at a slumber party, giving commonplace words the allure of secrecy.
You see, she is only harmless when she sleeps.*
~
Dec 9, 2023
Dec 9, 2023 at 7:49 PM UTC
the tune had been haunting
london for weeks past,
but when the lights went out,
they went out fast.
none of us thought
those days would end.
the music would always be there
anytime we needed a friend.
the sweetness of the soprano;
sprinkled over a sultry saxophone;
the steady heartbeat of an upright bass;
titillating trumpets tooting a tune.
the raven-haired lady: the envy of the room;
the men could only dream
of being so lucky.
the ladies could only scream,
hoping to catch the tall dark stranger's eye.
at the end of the night,
we all sang a whiskey lullaby.
but the wind blew cold-
it made us shiver.
the band packed up their magic.
the soprano ran off with the tall dark stranger.
all alone and without home,
the raven-haired lady blew her mind out,
nowhere left to roam.
nights became weeks and weeks became months.
our throats were perpetually plugged with lumps.
it's hard to say how meaningful it can be-
the touch something can have,
no matter how seemingly arbitrary-
until it is gone with the wind.
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 2:26 PM UTC
left brain, left brain
logical and literal
logarithms and lessons
long nights with little light
left brain sees the one
we love
and stays away
because it's the right thing to do
right brain, right brain
romantic and ridiculous
poetry and promises
dreams and darlings
yet to be killed
right brain sees the one
we love
and shrivels up dead
because being so close and so far
is too much for one to bear
when your heart is impaired
left brain, left brain
sees sights of soaring smiles
sees sights of somber sorrow
and squashes it with seas of cynicism
because left brain knows better
those people hurt us before-
why let them hurt us some more?
right brain, right brain
silly and sentimental
attaches arbitrary attributes
to objects of ominous obeisance
because right brain is impulsive
in this moment, they are everything
so they will always be everything-
right?
left brain, right brain
dynamic dichotomy
different and drastic
secure and stubborn
too strong-willed to back down
too lonely to break apart
disagree as we may
we know we might as well stay
for everyone in life needs a friend
and left brain and right brain
will be together until the end
Aug 30, 2017
Aug 30, 2017 at 8:08 PM UTC
Even to an untrained eye
One can spot layers of foundation
Caked into her face
Is she a victim
Of some historical imperative?
Is she caged
In some arbitrary matrix?
Some fun-house of mirrors
While a mustachioed ringleader
Overcharges, shouting
“Come one, come all, bedazzled spectator
Behold, the distorted woman
Transmogrifying before your eyes!”
Or maybe she’s just vain
Or betwixt the two
Somewhere, a boy drops a sixpence
It rattles in the dusky jar
As he enters the dark show
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 8:51 PM UTC
outgoing?
I'd say outspoken
never been arbitrary
or overbearing-
just vocal
my passion runs deep
and pours out
excited
overflowing
when it finds
another soul to share it with
the energy
others direct towards me
I absorb
and like a mirror
reflect it back towards them
the energy
that rests inside me
is like water
waiting
for an outside force
to heat me up
excite
my molecules
or
to cool me down
mellow
the chaos inside me
making me stable
making me solid
if being an extrovert
makes me
popular and
domineering,
a fun-loving,
party animal
who lacks introspection,
tell me why
I always choose
to isolate myself
why
my few friends I do have
I keep at a distance
except when I force myself
to enjoy their company
once or twice
in a year
why
I am easily talked over
my words drowned out
ignored
like background noise
my input
apbrubtly halted
as others drive over it
making it no more
than the dust
their tires kick up
why I let them
talk over me
rather than raise my voice
why I would rather
read in solitude
than go to a party
or play a video game
rather than socialize
why
would I choose
to ponder existence
over
existing with others
extroverted
means I get my energy
from external events
rather than the internal
I am not a synonym
for gregariousness
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
I cloud my mind
with thoughts of You
as I drive myself out of
and sometimes into
a crime of one
a conspiracy of two
one was in love
the other was too
this love was arbitrary
t'was asserted by both
this love was ordinary
a relation that quotes
the names of You and I
and of how we're meant to be,
how we were not to try,
and of how we'll always be.
nothing was really asserted
nothing is really true
it was just from me to myself
and how I'll always love You
and so I cloud my mind
with thoughts of You
to remind me of sanity
to deprive Me of truth.
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 7:27 AM UTC
A calendar knows little of a day,
Of any day; its arbitrary squares
Mark seasons as they amble on their way
From holy Advent ‘til the harvest fairs
When summer’s crops, all red and gold and blue
Along with piglets, ducks, some well-fed hens
Are carted squeaking, squealing, creaking to
Saint Michael’s fields in the Anglian fens
Old Father William lifts a pint (no less!)
With farmers selling cows and chicks and corn
For he is merry too, and quick to bless
The laboring marsh-folk on this autumn morn
Earth, sky, and air mark seasons as they fall,
And soon comes Martinmas, joyfully, for all
Sep 22, 2018
Sep 22, 2018 at 2:20 PM UTC
Let's go grab the money
Hidden in the Christmas Tree
Shoppe mason jar with the
Frosted stencil designs,
Ornate and resembling flora.
Let's take that money,
The three separate wadded
***** of once crisp
Green pieces of paper
That somehow reach the
Arbitrary total of one
Thousand, three hundred and
Twenty dollars and
Fifty lonely cents.
Let's take that 1,320.50
And go see the desolate
Stretch of sprawling
Humanity deferred between
These hiked peaks and the
Dangerous mountains
Separating the west
From the rest.
Let's go there!
Let's go there!
We'll make it across,
Be sure of that,
Be sure of nothing
But that!
Let's use the remaining
Seven fifty
To buy some
Seven Eleven sustenance
To have while
We walk backwards
Down backroads edged
With the encroachment
Of the wild back into
Negative space some
Long-ago engineer
Carved and paved.
Let's tell the driver of
This beat-up
Time-worn down
Overcast grey
Buick LeSabre
That we can pay her
Ten dollars to replace
The juice necessary to get
Us back to our sick aunt's
House in Poughkeepsie.
At the gas station
We'll tell her to stop
Real quick
And hope she leaves the
Auto to go
Pay the schlup at
The teller's booth
And jack the beater
And hope we won't
Have to bolt
Again if she doesn't.
Let's call my cousin
And find out who will give
Us four hundred dollars for
The stolen used parts store
And take that four hundred
And buy:
Two (2) greyhound tickets to get us
Back to our ****** apartment
In Stamford: 64.50 American
Three (3) damp-bunned flimsy
Beef patties glued between
Pieces of government-issue
Yellow American cheese
With all the fixins we please: 3.24 American
One (1) zip of dried out
Seeded and stemmed breaks
From the boredom of
Our own conscious
Processes: 120 American if lucky
At least eight (8) servings
Of amphetamine based
Pressed little buttons
Of confused energy: 200 American
One (1) bouquet of
Red yellow and oranges
Mixed on the petals of
Your mother's favorite
Species: whatever's left American.
Oct 2, 2012
Oct 2, 2012 at 12:40 AM UTC
Someone told me talking to women was completely different from talking to men
Familial desire circumventing physical rationality
I don't ******* get it
Flesh is flesh
There is no separation between this body and the next
No delineation save for my own arbitrary ones
This world is chaos bound by imposition
And none of it is real
I'm not even going to say middle class conceptions of family are constructs
Everything is a construct
Knowledge is anthropic chaos
Don't pretend you can tell the difference between essential existence and our subjective reordering of boundless matter
A gap does not form between a molecule of air and a molecule of flesh
I am trapped in my own sensations but I am not defined by them
So back to the story of material existence reduced to reproductive imperative
Treating all of the other *** as a means to displace one's self beyond annihilation into temporal infinity
Who ******* cares?
Legacy does not carry on after death
Legacy does not even carry through life
Language breaks down the moment we open our mouths
No one will ever view your life the way you view it
Splashing through a pool, ripples morph all reflections into monstrous amalgamations
Hey, tell me
Do you even remember yourself that clearly?
Hollow triumph, grandfather's bones in a grandfather clock ticking past twelve
Sorry, I just don't see the allure of treating half the human race as a means to satiate your own lust whether physical or genealogical
Or even categorising humans into binary dualisms that bored philosophers a century ago
Haven't you heard? God is dead
And there is no meaning to your boring male existence
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 9:37 PM UTC
ordinary is arbitrary
different is normal
fitting in means invisible
so avoid the conformal
distinct gets you noticed
so who wants to be equal
I'd rather be original
than anybody's sequel
you are of more value
when socially unacceptable
blending in is deadly
out of step is pref'rable
so when stuck in a crowd
decide what's more valuable
will you run with the herd
or dance to the eternal
Jan 26, 2019
Jan 26, 2019 at 10:40 AM UTC
A thud at my window!
An unseen moment was let go
For there I sat on a throne
Which bore an ephemeral glow.
—Though it soon had been heard:
Our mother's hand not in the least is arbitrary,
For she weaves such a gossamer web
That connects through all things contradictory—
And so I rose above my windowsill
And found, a soft bird perched hither,
So close to this ragged forest
Brave, I thought, she;
She waited for an eye, so it seemed,
To meet with her's—indefinitely
Though it took an eternity for me being there,
The next gaze she stole and flew away from me.
A meaning I saw with no boundaries
For an incoherent silence was answered upon—
Like the yearning of a wave to find a shore
Only then, to retreat back to its sea.
Aug 22, 2018
Aug 22, 2018 at 9:13 AM UTC
I catch glances
As I walk through town
Daughters
Out with their mums
Who pretend to look off in the arbitrary distance
As I scan them
From top
To toe
And then the glances of their proud mums
Old women who huff
As I have the demeanour
Of a stargazing ******
The odd freak
Who cheers me on with his eyes
Machos, who like to hold the gaze
Which I like to hold right back
Thinking of my father in a coffin
To return a calm, worrying stare
Sometimes a fleeting beauty will appear in a metro window
And both knowing of the ephemerality of our encounter
We **** with our eyes
Before she is whipped off
Down the dark tunnels
I can hold a gaze with almost anyone
People are fascinating
I can hold all these gazes
Until
Some men stare back
And I melt
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 3:17 AM UTC
I remember the day we just spent hours and hours together
Even though
I know
At the time it wasn’t quite so interesting
Now with my infinite wealth of knowledge
Granted to me by time, so arbitrary in nature
It seems to me like those were the good old days
Just you and me together
I can leave out all the tediousness
The clangs and clutters that inhabit any day on this strange planet
And just remember what it was like
To be with you
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 10:51 PM UTC
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales
and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.
Each word
had been tried over and over, at any rate,
on the man who was sold by the man who filled my plate.
My father hovered
over the Yorkshire pudding and the beef:
a peddler, a hawker, a merchant and an Indian chief.
Roosevelt! Willkie! and war!
How suddenly gauche I was
with my old-maid heart and my funny teenage applause.
Each night at home
my father was in love with maps
while the radio fought its battles with Nazis and ****
Except when he hid
in his bedroom on a three-day drunk,
he typed out complex itineraries, packed his trunk,
his matched luggage
and pocketed a confirmed reservation,
his heart already pushing over the red routes of the nation.
I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening thee wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,
the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones.
He died on the road,
his heart pushed from neck to back,
his white hanky signaling from the window of the Cadillac.
My husband,
as blue-eyed as a picture book, sells wool:
boxes of card waste, laps and rovings he can pull
to the thread
and say Leicester, Rambouillet, Merino,
a half-blood, it's greasy and thick, yellow as old snow.
And when you drive off, my darling,
Yes, sir! Yes, sir! It's one for my dame,
your sample cases branded with my father's name,
your itinerary open,
its tolls ticking and greedy,
its highways built up like new loves, raw and speedy.
2.3k
Some where he sits or gorily sleeps
The blank stare behind a rigid cut
Eyes of a seductive Mongoloid
Offering nothing for the poison of the sea
The arbitrary swirls of mechanical time pieces
Add heavy track to this an
already shady beat
all the While A reproduction of some Germanic doll
Shrinks smaller into the keyholes
of his frontal lobe
A pleasant amnesia of the purist kind
This anglo doll she is now just a capsized pin
Her black and white knee socks mold into a geosed canvas
Ready to be re-painted with all the emotions he has left
What if I told you I loved you?
By the stairs with the works of post-modern misunderstanding
But it will be just a whisper of shear for the racket builds upward
The spinning mechanics joined by the school busses stopping forever
Yes that statement of old is clearly devoid
Merrily a swallow’s anthem
An absurd tangent of malfeasance
Almost a monosyllabic destruction
Only some misshapen coke spoons remain
As well asthe hands of a man who is much safer out of bed
The saline was much too dodgy
And the sheets…..Well they were never clean
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 30, 2010 at 9:11 AM UTC