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ht May 2018
There's popcorn on the ceiling,
a million bajillion clusters that I've spent days trying to count.
In the 1950's these ceilings exploded into popularity.
And until 1977, homeowners blasted asbestos covered popcorn toward the sky, letting mesothelioma fibers fall back to their floor like it was harmless dust.
I take a deep breath, letting the air settle deep in my chest before letting it back out.
My ceiling is probably not made of asbestos.
It's probably styrofoam or some other cheap, paper-based product.
I take another deep breath.
The EPA banned the use of asbestos in these ceilings.
Apparently, inhaled in large quantities, asbestos causes lung disease, lung scarring, and lung cancer.
Another deep, deep breath.
I continue counting the probably not cancer causing popcorn.
I wonder if I would be able to feel the particles swimming in my lungs like fiber glass–thin, delicate, sharp.
I wonder if it would **** me.
I wonder if my family would file a claim like you see on those old commercials screaming,
"If you or a loved one developed mesothelioma you, yes you, could be entitled to compensation."
Or, something like that.
Breathe.
The air tastes funny.
My ceiling is most likely not made of asbestos.
But, I probably wouldn't care if it was.
I went down a weird internet spiral and now I know a lot about different kinds of ceilings | h.t.
Ari Feb 2010
there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia
My best Ginsberg impression.
I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for ***** and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not.  Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The night gowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed -- well, the sheets have turned to gold --
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story --
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-****** story --
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black and a red powder seeps through my
veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see, meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian
street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.
Mike Bergeron Sep 2012
There was a house fire on my street last night …well… not exactly my street, but on a little, sketchy, dead-end strip of asphalt, sidewalks, weeds, and garbage that juts into my block two houses down. It was on that street. Rosewood Court, population: 12, adjusted population: 11, characterized by anonymity and boarded windows, peppered with the swift movements of fat street rats. I’ve never been that close to a real, high-energy, make-sure-to-spray-down-your-roof-with-a-hose-so-it-doesn’t-catch­ fire before. It was the least of my expectations for the evening, though I didn’t expect a crate of Peruvian bananas to fall off a cargo plane either, punching through the ceiling, littering the parking lot with damaged fruit and shingles, tearing paintings and shelves and studs from the third floor walls, and crashing into our kitchen, shattering dishes and cabinets and appliances. Since that never happened, and since neither the former nor the latter situation even crossed my mind, I’ll stick with “least of my expectations,” and bundle up with it inside that inadequate phrase whatever else may have happened that I wouldn’t have expected.



I had been reading in my living room, absently petting the long calico fur of my roommate’s cat Dory. She’s in heat, and does her best to make sure everyone knows it, parading around, *** in the air, an opera of low trilling and loud meows and deep purring. As a consequence of a steady tide of feline hormones, she’s been excessively good humored, showering me with affection, instead of her usual indifference, punctuated by occasional, self-serving shin rubs when she’s hungry. I saw the lights before I heard the trucks or the shouts of firemen or the panicked wail of sirens, spitting their warning into the night in A or A minor, but probably neither, I’m no musician. Besides, Congratulations was playing loud, flowing through the speakers in the corners of the room, connected to the record player via the receiver with the broken volume control, travelling as excited electrons down stretches of wire that are, realistically, too short, and always pull out. The song was filling the space between the speakers and the space between my ears with musings on Brian Eno, so the auditory signal that should have informed me of the trouble that was afoot was blocked out. I saw the lights, the alternating reds and whites that filled my living room, drawing shifting patterns on my walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and shelves of books, dragging me towards the door leading outside, through the cluttered bike room, past the sleeping, black lump of oblivious fur that is usually my boisterous male kitten, and out into the bedlam I  had previously been ignorant to. I could see the smoke, it was white then gray then white, all the while lending an acrid taste to the air, but I couldn’t see where it was issuing from. The wind was blowing the smoke toward my apartment, away from Empire Mills. I tried to count the firetrucks, but there were so many. I counted six on Wilmarth Ave, one of which was the awkward-looking, heavy-duty special hazards truck. In my part of the city, the post-industrial third-wave ***** river valley, you never know if the grease fire that started with homefries in a frying pan in an old woman’s kitchen will escalate into a full-blown mill fire, the century-old wood floors so saturated with oil and kerosene and ****** and manufacturing chemicals and ghosts and god knows what other flammable **** that it lights up like a fifth of July leftover sparkler, burning and melting the hand of the community that fed it for so many decades, leaving scars that are displayed on the local news for a week and are forgotten in a few years’ time.



The night was windy, and the day had been dry, so precautions were abundant, and I counted two more trucks on Fones Ave. One had the biggest ladder I’ve ever seen. It was parked on the corner of Fones and Wilmarth, directly across from the entrance into the forgotten dead-end where the forgotten house was burning, and the ladder was lifting into the air. By now my two roommates had come outside too, to stand on our rickety, wooden staircase, and Jeff said he could see flames in the windows of one of the three abandoned houses on Rosewood, through the third floor holes where windows once were, where boards of plywood were deemed unnecessary.



“Ay! Daddy!”



My neighbor John called up to us. He serves as the eyes and ears and certainly the mouth of our block, always in everyone’s business, without being too intrusive, always aware of what’s going down and who’s involved. He proceeded to tell us the lowdown on the blaze as far as he knew it, that there were two more firetrucks and an ambulance down Rosewood, that the front and back doors to the house were blocked by something from inside, that those somethings were very heavy, that someone was screaming inside, that the fire was growing.



Val had gone inside to get his jacket, because despite the floodlights from the trucks imitating sunlight, the wind and the low temperature and the thought of a person burning alive made the night chilly. Val thought we should go around the block, to see if we could get a better view, to satisfy our congenital need to witness disaster, to see the passenger car flip over the Jersey barrier, to watch the videos of Jihadist beheadings, to stand in line to look at painted corpses in velvet, underlit parlors, and sit in silence while their family members cry. We walked down the stairs, into full floodlight, and there were first responders and police and fully equipped firefighters moving in all directions. We watched two firemen attempting to open an old, rusty fire hydrant, and it could’ve been inexperience, the stress of the situation, the condition of the hydrant, or just poor luck, but rather than opening as it was supposed to the hydrant burst open, sending the cap flying into the side of a firetruck, the water crashing into the younger of the two men’s face and torso, knocking him back on his ***. While he coughed out surprised air and water and a flood of expletives, his partner got the situation under control and got the hose attached. We turned and walked away from the fire, and as we approached the turn we’d take to cut through the rundown parking lot that would bring us to the other side of the block, two firemen hurried past, one leading the other, carrying between them a stretcher full of machines for monitoring and a shitload of wires and tubing. It was the stiff board-like kind, with handles on each end, the kind of stretcher you might expect to see circus clowns carry out, when it’s time to save their fallen, pie-faced cohort. I wondered why they were using this archaic form of patient transportation, and not one of the padded, electrical ones on wheels. We pushed past the crowd that had begun forming, walked past the Laundromat, the 7Eleven, the carwash, and took a left onto the street on the other side of the parking lot, parallel to Wilmarth. There were several older men standing on the sidewalk, facing the fire, hands either in pockets or bringing a cigarette to and from a frowning mouth. They were standing in the ideal place to witness the action, with an unobstructed view of the top two floors of the burning house, its upper windows glowing orange with internal light and vomiting putrid smoke.  We could taste the burning wires, the rugs, the insulation, the asbestos, the black mold, the trash, and the smell was so strong I had to cover my mouth with my shirt, though it provided little relief. We said hello, they grunted the same, and we all stood, watching, thinking about what we were seeing, not wanting to see what we were thinking.

Two firefighters were on the roof by this point, they were yelling to each other and to the others on the ground, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the sirens from all the emergency vehicles that were arriving.  It seemed to me they sent every firetruck in the city, as well as more than a dozen police cars and a slew of ambulances, all of them arriving from every direction. I guess they expected the fire to get really out of hand, but we could already see the orange glow withdrawing into the dark of the house, steam and smoke rippling out of the stretched, wooden mouths of the rotted window frames. In a gruff, habitual smoker’s voice, we heard

                                      “Chopper called the fire depahtment

We was over at the vet’s home

                He says he saw flames in the windas

                                                                                                                                                We all thought he was shittin’ us

We couldn’t see nothin’.”

A man between fifty-five to sixty-five years old was speaking, no hair on his shiny, tanned head, old tattoos etched in bluish gray on his hands, arms, and neck, menthol smoke rising from between timeworn fingers. He brought the cigarette to his lips, drew a hearty chest full of smoke, and as he let it out he repeated

                                                “Yea, chopper called em’

Says he saw flames.”

The men on the roof were just silhouettes, backlit by the dazzling brightness of the lights on the other side.  The figure to the left of the roof pulled something large up into view, and we knew instantly by the cord pull and the sound that it was a chainsaw. He began cutting directly into the roof. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, wondered if he was scared of falling into the fire, assumed he probably was, but had at least done this before, tried to figure out if he was doing it to gain entry or release pressure or whatever. The man to the right was hacking away at the roof with an axe. It was surreal to watch, to see two men transformed from public servants into fingers of destruction, the pinkie and ring finger fighting the powerful thumb of the controlled chemical reaction eating the air below them, to watch the dark figures shrouded in ethereal light and smoke and sawdust and what must’ve been unbearable heat from below, to be viewing everything with my own home, my belongings, still visible, to know it could easily have gone up in flames as well.

I should’ve brought my jacket. I remember complaining about it, about how the wind was passing through my skin like a window screen, chilling my blood, in sharp contrast to the heat that was morphing and rippling the air above the house as it disappeared as smoke and gas up into the atmosphere from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe one, the men on the roof were still working diligently cutting and chopping, but we could no longer see any signs of flames, and there were figures moving around in the house, visible in the windows of the upper floors, despite the smoke. Figuring the action must be reaching its end, we decided to walk back to our apartment. We saw Ken’s brown pickup truck parked next to the Laundromat, unable to reach our parking lot due to all the emergency vehicles and people clogging our street. We came around the corner and saw the other two members of the Infamous Summers standing next to our building with the rest of the crowd that had gathered. Dosin told us the fire was out, and that they had pulled someone from inside the gutted house, but no ambulance had left yet, and his normally smiling face was flat and somber, and the beaten guitar case slung over his shoulder, and his messed up hair, and the red in his cheeks from the cold air, and the way he was moving rocks around with the toe of his shoe made him look like a lost child, chasing a dream far from home but finding a nightmare in its place, instead of the professional who never loses his cool or his direction.

The crowd all began talking at once, so I turned around, towards the dead end and the group of firefighters and EMTs that were emerging. Their faces were stoic, not a single expression on all but one of those faces, a young EMT, probably a Basic, or a Cardiac, or neither, but no older than twenty, who was silently weeping, the tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks, his eyes empty of emotion, his lips drawn tight and still. Four of them were each holding a corner of the maroon stretcher that took two to carry when I first saw it, full of equipment. They did not rush, they did not appear to be tending to a person barely holding onto life, they were just carrying the weight. As they got close gasps and cries of horror or disgust or both issued from the crowd, some turned away, some expressions didn’t change, some eyes closed and others stayed fixed on what they came to see. One woman vomited, right there on the sidewalk, splashing the shoes of those near her with the partially digested remains of her EBT dinner. I felt my own stomach start to turn, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t.

                                                                                It was like I was seven again,

                                in the alleyway running along the side of the junior high school I lived near and would eventually attend,

looking in silent horror at what three eighth graders from my neighborhood were doing.

It was about eight in the evening of a rainy,

late summer day,

and I was walking home with my older brother,

cutting through the alley like we always did.

The three older boys were standing over a small dog,

a terrier of some sort.

They had duct taped its mouth shut and its legs together,

but we could still hear its terrified whines through its clenched teeth.

One of the boys had cut off the dog’s tail.

He had it in one hand,

and was still holding the pocket knife in the other.

None of them were smiling,

or talking,

nor did they take notice of Andrew and I.

There was a garden bag standing up next to them that looked pretty full,

and there was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to it.

In slow motion I watched,

horrified,

as one of the boys,

Brian Jones-Hartlett,

picked up the shaking animal,

put it in the bag,

covered it with the leaves from the ground,

and with wide,

shining eyes,

set the bag

on fire

with a long-necked

candle

lighter.

It was too much for me then. I couldn’t control my nausea. I threw up and sat down while my head swam.

I couldn’t understand. I forgot my brother and the fact that he was older, that he should stop this,

Stop them,

There’s a dog in there,

You’re older, I’m sick,

Why can’t I stop them?

It was like
out in the mountains,
when my feet are pressed and purpled
from pushing the world to roll her callused breast,
then each breath, deservingly,
funnels the friction into fire.

but here our milk flesh thumbs
flick the ridges of the flint
and through trees we **** a Bic
just to exhale flame again.

oh-two deprived at altitude
or getting high with all the dudes
you’d count them as two trails that lead to the same place

but that’s just what the map says.
neurotransmitter math has
sold, by weight, the dopamine
wrapped like gods great gift
in threads of nervous lace

and you forget that different paths
never summit the same
if steep, or shallow, the peak can be
epiphany pleasure or just good ****

in green pill bottles, they trap the trees
and plastic cages hang on me
when the weight of our minds
bends our necks towards the asbestos sky
where porous plains of ceiling tile
have us counting holes in the light

so you see my disappointment,
when you were too ****** or drunk or cold
and said it would be better
if we just went inside

as we circled up the stairwell
you stepped easily on plaster pieces
of white ceiling that had fallen to concrete

perhaps it is from fear
that some can find a comfort
having heavens built so brittle
that they crumble within reach
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
the torso of stars of the constellation of scorpio is dying, it's weakening; the venomous scorpion tail still shines brightly, and the pliers are bright enough to see even with immediate light pollution: but no street lamp shines brighter than the stars, even the the distance disparity, and indeed if the last constellation of the zodiac becomes dim, i'll begin to worry.

i was given three christmas presents this year,
the third i can't immediately remember
but the first two i can:
two houses side by side,
one had twelve black bin bags and one orange
recycling bag for collection -
the other had a skip in its driveway
with a sign in the skip:
PLEASE TAKE YOUR DOG ****
FROM MY SKIP AND NEVER DUMP
IT HERE AGAIN!
ah... the third present, it's january
and i'm walking without gloves,
in converse, with a short sleeve shirt
and a hoodie and nothing else:
newspaper "dialectics" section writers
say northern england floods of recently
are not due to global warming...
i wonder how much this writer gets paid
to say the floods were caused by orangutan farts,
or the dairy factories of ukrainian methane punch
politics; i really do wonder...
i guess newtonian physics' principles
died with einstein's theories
stuck in the deep end of einstein's parabolas
of solid objects dipped into: speed of light
indeed, it gains momentum because it travels
via parabolas rather than straight lines,
hence the parabolic acceleration: up-down
up-down trigonometry linear functions of
either sine or cosine... the third trigonometric
allowance i cannot explain but it doesn't really
matter when it comes to what i'm trying to say:
relativity of immersion as a sinking into:
time relative to space means it equates at some point,
either death as a point of departure
or life as a point of constant engagement -
and as for those who say the theory is too difficult
and your interpretation of a theory in a different
medium is stupid... well... do the mathematics,
my mathematical + and = are equivalent to adjectives
and verbs (e.g.).
no, what really bothers me with this problem
of the global warming debate is the synchronised
activation of denial with doubt missing,
if it can't be doubted (cause & effect), and if
nothing is to be done about it... the only solution
is to deny it: block a punch... get a tsunami back.
it's bothersome on two levels...
english as the language of globalisation (
not exactly the old lingua franca), but rather
the encircling language, the language of constraints,
lingua amplexa / lingua stasus quo, hardly a language
of trade, a language of monotone -chromatic politics...
is very prone to bombastic expressions:
it has not philosophical narrative in the sense
of a book of philosophy - it merely ushers in
a maxim to stop any philosophical narration or dialogue.
on another level though, it's immersion in darwinism,
educational darwinism of post-colonialism is horrid,
if all that scientific positivism was the zenith of science
between the 18th and 19th centuries, the nadir
came with darwinism... because with science being
tricked to encapsulated popular imagination
the greater proportion of the populace had the easiest
of accesses to a scientific theory (aristotle kept in
the **** in the dark all this time), an with a popularised
imagining of darwinism hell broke free in the 20th
century... indeed darwinism killed off scientific positivism,
and by doing so... all noble and human ideals died
with it... came the mechanisation of society,
the death of the rural life, a detachment from nature
as man took to live above nature rather than parallel with it;
and the new zenith that's the zeitgeist of today?
humanistic negativism, humanistic negativism...
the death of the novel, the death of an interest in
philosophy in the english speaking world...
take as you like...
but when you're a sensitive drinker as i am,
and you watch the 2014 film *i origins
and don't cry...
well... then i guess anaesthetics won't work
when your heart can't feel the calm good apathy
with your many stage frights concerning your
next ingenious plot-line over a little hurt or a little
scare... not courageous enough to hurt the one
that hurt you, but simply passing the hurt onto
a stranger.

p.s. YOU RENTED THE ******* SKIP!
       AND DOG **** IS NOT REALLY ASBESTOS!
Tammy Boehm Oct 2014
Gun metal and asbestos
The tundra of your father’s eyes
His heart left in London after the war
Stubborn, your mother clung to the lie
Hide the shameful sight
Your hands left over right
Roll a crochet ****** under your blanket
Picture perfect mask the missing
Digits and appendages
“That child’s not mine…Ma”
Shoulda put ya in a home

Whispered sins and indiscretions
You slept with your sister in silent rooms
Peed in a porcelain ***
Defiant, Old Nellie in her witch gray wool
She won’t latch the outhouse again
Keep that abomination strapped to your thigh
Crossed and awake at night
You came out swinging when he touched you
"Shoulda put ya in a home…."

Pick the rock salt from your hide
And never cry
Secrets sting more than saline bullets
You bared those knees in a hand made dress
And fled…newly wed
Birthed that ten toed baby girl
Relegated yourself to the drain of domesticity
Brownstones and picket fences
When did you cast the first thread
Spiderwebs and pyrite
Whispered sins and indiscretions
Broken dishes…
Broken bones…
Broken vows…
You lied so much better than you lived

That crave for validation in your fathers’ eyes
Drift away over his open grave
You played Taps in the shadows
One last time
I was an open wound in a house of pain
You couldn’t love your child
And swallow the shame
That little redhead down the street
Baby boy you couldn’t give
Fed your shattered ego with fear
In my eyes
Notch your bedpost with ticks for lovers and fools
Man eater never sated
**** point met….She’s not your daughter
You left him in an empty room
Payback is a jade eyed snake coiled up in your marriage bed

That High school Knight
Greasy hands and milk toast breath
You fled again
Tell me you’re happy
When he’s gone from dawn to dusk
Catching crappies* and suckin Pabst in a can
While you pickle yourself with cheap *****
And soap operas
Buried your crazy mother, your Witch of a sister
And the **** you married first….
No ripples of remorse
In the cement of your soul

We only speak across miles
Unreconciled
You will never apologize
Little dreams strangled
Wet ******* around my neck
Soap in my mouth
Welts and belts,
Wire brushes and hangers
Fitting discipline
Can’t leave my own alone with you
Drown your grandchild in the toilet bowl
Rather than ask for the truth
From a terrified child
Who had only begun to adore you
Now I can’t love his scars away
The truth is bitter, cold and lonely
Love cannot grow in a heart of stone
Chiseled bitter by the sins of a mother
A father and another
You never had a chance to be
Complete….
02/24/10
For Barbara....
*crappies are a pan fish.
My mom was born with congenital birth defects including a missing finger on her right hand, a missing limb below her right knee and no toes on her left foot. Her father swore she was not his child for several years. Her family was dysfunctional and she married into another dysfunctional family. When she finally divorced my dad to marry a high school sweetheart, she told my dad he was not my father. I know specifics weren't required but I felt they were necessary to understand the context of the poem.
mining ceased overnight
boom days were no more
the conveyor belt stands idle
buildings in disrepair
infrastructure rusting away
asbestos remnants
piled high
the landscape
irreversibly scarred forever
the town who relied
so much on the mine
slowly ebbed in vitality
one by one
the business houses
were closed
houses where the pit workers lived
vacated for good
the company saw lean times
its ore seen to be hazardous
health concerns
were raised by the medical fraternity
the carpet was pulled
from under the company's feet
its share value
fell hard
it then folded up

in an ex-mining town
a legacy remains
a gigantic gaping hole
poorly in need of remediation
for miles around the mine's site
the asbestos filaments
float on the air
and are carried well beyond
by the wind
miner's who ingested
the asbestos
into their lungs
suffer diseases like Mesothelioma
and other forms of cancers
the town's prosperity
whittled away
the people
have no industry
to keep them sustained
into the dust
the boom turned overnight
mining towns
know well this plight

Epilogue

we hear of a resource
being harvested from the earth
yet where the mineral is mined
there is the potential for a dearth
the slogan of mining towns
is that of boom or bust
vircapio gale Nov 2012
he could play a frakkin' minuet
with his hands, this dude,
with perfect pitch and key --
and birdcalls of a timeless cult.
he'd hangglided in volcano rainbows,
had meathook *** from rafters.
reciting Shakespeare, conjured instant goosebumps, tears --
towering heartwise, intellect vast
whatever roles he played at night to model for our soul
we ripped the roof from off my fathers house, sublime,
wearing attic soot in all our pores,
asbestos grin contracting into mycophile hopes
flirting with the passing birds
in leaves and pizza parlors,
tanned and buff, shingle tar on shoulders, nails,
iron hard for her and her and her
the beating sun-breath coughing under mask
each tack an instant echo for the breeze
to take direction from a symbol core
no symbol ever truly held..
refreshing airs to bleed away the vanity,
yet halfway on the ladder there
an interrupting brag, my father's fascia beams
report card scores as if a better world they made
in money pitted recess taxing hidden filth- -
thank you,
Bach, to break up pride with existential high
new melodic rain to cover over thousands lost to sell,
settle dust,
handwind bard, aesthete
innovate human
you turn me on with tales of your amazing wife
bareshirt in your unfinished house, lusting eaves,
backyard grasshoppers on the counter,
****** as insect brains can be
to tilt their eyes with me at unreal fullness spectra-circle on a cloud
not possible the wholeness found
in wish fulfilling living roofs
of ecosystem awe and sunlamp bottles
here, and here,
under moss on backwoods skillion
or trussed on tree spread wide, open-hipped for skylove --
contentednesses missed the meaning now
of mother-art to birth anew the endless homes,
ecosophy's abundant cheer
laughter even in the nooks of dying nails
extemporaneous arcology of barefoot
ridgetop feardance raked in soffit shift
from gray to green
invulnerable vigor gained and gone
and grown again
from marginalia to universal veil
'happy evermore' no matter this or that
a swimming hole of naked sayings streamed,
inner wash of salt and sweat, an afterthought deluge
to challenge dormer crease-dive of a dogma drain
structured, learned pillage ivory still
though greensulated soon








.
arcology: a concept combining architecture and ecology as envisioned by Paolo Soleri.

greensulate: insulation made from mushrooms

'the endless house' is a light-maximizing design created by Friedrick Kiesler

'marginalia' and 'universal veil' refer to parts of a mushroom

'fascia, soffit, rake, truss, dormer' refer to parts of a roof; 'hipped' and 'skillion' are styles of roofs
Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off

In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.

It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.

The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.

The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,

Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!

The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.

How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.

The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'

Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!
Kimberly Seibert Aug 2014
My water tower in the sun, my pillar in the dark.
Rust on a warehouse door, **** anatomy of a shark.
A hidden, naked cartoon, vulnerable and hurt.
The afternoon rays of light, exposing my empire of dirt.

Squid in a dark room, forgotten seat for you to ****.
Discovering rotten apples, the fruitless empty pits.
Far on the *****, the eye is negligent to mankind.
No on has *****, yet "American ****" isn't hard to find.

From this floor to the next, watch out for the holes.
Stalactites are forming, between the rods and the poles.
The gang is all here, each with a gat.
Questioning Detroit, wondering "where da party at."

A symphonic silence, from abandoned piano keys.
For the love of the city, the birds and the bees.
A ladder to assist you, in anything but a climb.
Wasting away the day, when all you have is time.

Where they once opted elevators, they now offer only stairs.
Peacefully residing, in the asbestos, grime, and the glares.
The walls they're all puking, a paint chip epidemic.
No chalk at the chalkboard, a failed academic.

Some sign walls in scribble, some bless us with art.
Beautiful light fixtures hang, while sanctuaries fall apart.
The debris and the rubble, wooden frames and the splinters.
A back road in the city, in the dead cold of winter.

An altar to stand at, with no sermon or expectation.
A pew a sinner can rest, with only God's examination.
A wall devoted to an *****, hymnal at hand.
Stained glass more exaggerated, with shards in the plan.

Dancing on floorboards in rafters, climbing up to rooftops.
Wandering and trespassing, trying to avoid cops.
Panda bears, pillar ****, and playing in the snow.
In the shadows and the blackest rooms, I really like to go.

Pussycats in hallways and the golden lightning kitty.
Posing seductively in vacancy is where I feel pretty.
I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel, I've found King David.
Interrogated with the whys and don'ts, though I wish they'd save it.

Picasso in the projects, Sloth and Marilyn Manson.
Fairmont Creamery Company, a view held for ransom.
Some window panes are for looking out, some for looking in.
Struggle Buggy Snow White still sleeps, forever strugglin'.

I've seen them ask for me, "Warriors come out to play."
Detroit is to me, what night is to day.
I caught Pikachu and have seen a **** elephant.
In the frost of the Fisher, I found a heart that was spent.

But the cardio made of brick, spoke with such sass.
Resting bones at the Packard, in an armchair that's trash.
Patriots are nosey and robots attack.
Never putting an hour on when I'll get back.

On top of the world, or looking up from the bottom.
Abandoned buildings, schools, churches, there's something about them.
Where a tree has a better chance of rooting and planting.
When a society suddenly seems a bit slanting.

Color a flower on a wall that's been broken and charred.
Breathe life into a battlefield, encourage the scarred.
Take away ego and vanity, glance into a filthy mirror.
Don't just listen to a person, actually hear.

Sure maybe at times I may seem a bit morbid.
And my words can be harsh and approach kind of forward.
But when you're standing alone, in a hallways that's dead.
Whose last bell has been rung and last book has been read.

Then you hear footsteps from the floor up above.
It's in that uncanny awareness.
And fear...
I find love.
Sam Miller Apr 2013
When I say hero you
look for Superman
Flying through Metropolis or
Batman slinking through Gotham’s shadows.
And when I say heroine
You can think only of needles
Poking through skin like the shell of a beetle.
When I say hero
Everyone looks skyward for capes and spandex
Or a symbol lighting up the clouds.
But Clark Bruce and Peter
can’t save you from yourself.
These suit-clad saviors are fantasies.
Fairytales put before us so we can have something
to believe in when the ordinary people fail us.

I have seen people around me, people I love,
crumble like weakened plaster.
And I have met people who were already lying
in a pile of dust and debris at my feet.
I’ve seen them **** asbestos into their lungs
and draw tic tac toe on their arms in crimson
I have seen someone become their own villain!
But I have seen these people get up again,
Pick up the pieces of their glass hearts,
And glue them back together for the sake of their sanity.
I have seen villains become heroes.

These heroes, MY heroes are the ones with the scars on their wrists
but no tags on their toes, the ones that heave into the porcelain bowl
but still try to eat each day.
These are my heroes.

My heroes are the parents raising kids and battling demons old and new,
the abuse victims who got out, or are stuck but still fighting.
These…these are my heroes.

Broken survivors, living despite everything that keeps them from wanting to,
Despite all their scars and battle wounds they are alive and they are trying.
The ones who are not saving others but saving themselves.
These are heroes.

Some people look down on the wounded, the broken, and the insecure
like they were the cause of their own problems and refused the simple solutions of “**** it up”
and “get over it” because they were too lazy to get better.

Don’t you dare tell me that they don’t want to fix this,
That they don’t wake up each morning and wish
With every fiber of their being that they could look into a mirror
And finally, finally, love what they see.
Don’t tell me that these people aren’t strong
Because they go to bed each night with eyes red and raw from crying
And they wake up with bags under their eyes but they.
Keep.
Going.

**** your superheroes.
Haven't posted anything in a while, but I'm back.
as i bathed in the ashes
of a swirling monstrous din
the cries of  a woman
hysterically expunging
ghastly portions of an all
consuming horror
pierced my ears,
cuddled my heart

as i huddled in a corner
biting lacerated knees
i beheld ax wielding
firemen swagger into the
jagged dangers of a
metallic avalanche, its
voracious maw
swallowing last
acts of heroic love

as i genuflected toward
Trinity's steeple,
i was cowed by
the rushing noise
of a splintering tower
collapsing downward,
billowing outward,
a gray predation
scattering the proud
humbling the mighty
breeding terror
threshing anything
fearfully racing
through the city's
cavernous breaches

as i fled down
Wall Street
screaming adrenalin
outran bits of the city
cascading down
stalking, nipping,
gnashing at fleeting steps
chasing reeling refugees
into miraculous sanctuaries
shielding trembling confusion
in blanket's of grace

as i peered into
the mortal wound
of the South Tower
incomprehensibly wondering
what my eyes refused to
understand; a slow
astonishing epiphany
of the grisly hell unfolding
in the upper floors
was confirmed by the
intermittent slow
cascade of leapers
deciding it was
a good day to die

as i decamped
temporary refuge
i entered an unsure
midnight of a blackened
street joining a growing mass
of refugees trundling eastward,
our burning eyes yearning
to perceive a river of escape
hoping the bits of torn cloth will
shield nostrils and cover mouths
protecting tinged lungs from
emulsified ash of glass
and asbestos laden air

as i made my way
northward, enveloped
in ambivalent confusion,
shell shocked  by civic turmoil,
covered in terror dust;
amassing voyeurs
rushing downtown
incredulously asked
what we witnessed,
a Jersey Journal stringer
refused to believe
people jumped
from the upper floors,
as vendors in Chinatown
marked up bottles of water
and a barkeep of a
crowded SOHO saloon
refused me entry
to use the
bathroom fearing
contamination risk...

as i stood depleted
on Christopher Street
ATMs and wireless
phones out of service and
my PATH way home
shut down;
a Sisters of Charity
AIDS hospice
brought me in,
wiped the terror dust
from my clothes,
gave me grape juice to drink,
set me a bed for the night
and put me to work
in the kitchen
to feed God's children.

as i stood on
a late afternoon
Washington Street,
witnessing Seven WTC
plunge into another raging billow
the collapsing day ended
in a room shared with
a young man traumatized
by the days events.
We related our
halting incomprehensions
as the sound of fighter jets
circling the city filled
the void in our
disjointed narratives.
My roommate related
that he was on the plaza
as jumpers splattered around him.  
A tearful PA Cop pleaded for help
to cover the dead.  
It was the last request of this
trembling public servant
as a jumper crushed him
as he finished speaking.

as i fell off to sleep that night
my young roommate
tossed and turned
in the maelstrom of
a deeply troubled sleep.
  

Music Selection:
Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi

9/10/13
Oakland
jbm
recollections of 9/11
Taylor St Onge May 2021
I’m thinking of the faded checkered pattern that has been
smoothed away by time on the dark cloth seats of a Nissan Pathfinder
                                          driving down Ryan Road on a hot day in June.
My mother, in the front seat, singing along to a Spice Girls cassette.  

I’m thinking: red, plastic, crab-shaped sandbox and
                                      McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.  
I’m thinking: light princess pink, seafoam green, and robin’s egg blue.  
I’m thinking of a framed cheetah cross stitch, hanging on the wall of what
                                      used to be our bedroom at my grandparent’s house.
I’m thinking: Barbie doll houses and Hot Wheels and a cul-de-sac at
                                                                ­                     the end of the street.  

The sweet smell of cigar smoke.  The ice cold splash of the garden hose.  The pop of a bubble.  The sting of soap in the eye.  Dreams by The Cranberries.  As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys.  A HelloKitty boombox slowly spitting out vapor when the deck builders hit a power line while digging.  The deer in the backyard looking for corn.  The faded wood of a playset that was never really played on.

My father: sitting alone on a splintered bench by the firepit at the edge of the woods, empty beer cans at his feet, chain smoking cigarettes, and humming along to a song that is stuck—forever stuck—on the tip of my tongue.
I do not know if this happened.  I cannot ask him.  
(I’m not sure if I would want to ask him.)  
But I can make an educated inference that that line of
fiction is really nonfiction.  
A memory that feels like a phantom limb.  
                            Sounds like the sharp crinkle of static.  
                                                     Co­vered in a gossamer, dreamlike haze.  

There is a distinct otherness to this memory, to who
                                     I think I was before the trauma.  
We are two different people.  A yin and a yang.  A day and a night.  
The hermit crab is soft beneath its hard shell.
The asbestos is not apparent within the insulation.  
You cannot see the lead in the paint.
The mold inside the fruit.
prompt one for write your grief: who was the person you used to be?
Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and ****** and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
A H J Oct 2017
The demons live with me –
They have their own blankets ready,
So later we would go visit the creeks
And they will push me to the water and let me suffocate,
They will drown me in muds
They will blind me so all I could see is dark.

The demons live with me –
They invite me to our special hideout,
Decaying building and magical asbestos
And they will prepare an empty room full of irons and knives,
They will slit me with them
They will kiss me with them 'till I become numb.

The demons, the demons live with me –
They will celebrate my birthday party,
Their presents are bouquet of blights
And they also give me flaming matches for me to light up an inferno,
They will burn with me, laugh
They will burn every sadness I felt.

The demons live with me.
They are inside, they are calling me.
The demons, demons, demons,
THESE DEMONS,
          Demons,         d e m o n s
                                 are me.
Oct 5 2017.
Jack P Oct 2017
Oh, my Medusa
That piercing, seductive stare
Gets me so rock hard.

"braullw nevae falls"
That's 'braille never fails',
Spelled by a blind man.

Matsuo Basho
Turns in his grave: first, five times
then seven, then five.

The dankest of ****
Floats slowly into my lungs
Oh wait...Asbestos.

hahaha ye boiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
yeyeyeyeye ye boiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
hehe wyd
for dbiz
wandering
across
the splinters of
squandered
seasons
the Hajj
of the
lost ones
completes
a broken
circle

returning
with hope to
burrow back
into the safety
of desecrated
graveyards

welcomed
home to the
embrace of a
cadaverous cloak
and the kiss
of carrion
smudged lips,
Hajji's eye
the decrepit
visage of
criminal
depravity

germination
of this
Arab Spring
mocks us

aromas
of jasmine
elude us

emulsified
concrete
clogs our
nostrils

burning eyes
filled with
asbestos dust
form
grateful
blinders
to the
ruination
of reason
betrayed

arcane
remnants
of our life
lay inert
in the open
****** of
fractured
habitations

amidst
jumbled rubble
the decaying
carcasses of
razed buildings
boast grotesque
sculptures of
twisted rebar
cradling artifacts
of a past life

pink
hair curlers
splashed
with sickly
blood grown
mold

scavenged
bicycles
limp on
banished
parts

smashed
skulls of
dolls weep,
her
dismembered
limb reaches
for a lost child’s
nursing
hand

the charred
remains of a
Persian rug
maps the
scale
of a city’s
deconstruction
and a frayed
regions
disconsolation

electric luxury
flowing water
the friendly bustle
of the street
bespeak
expired memories
foretelling an
unimaginal future

sectarian strife
enforces  a communal
solitary confinement

in cold blood
we willingly
murdered
compassion

we
butchered
trust

we
euthanized
our
common
humanity

constructing
buildings is
easy

rebuilding
ourselves
impossible

Music Selection:
Segovia, Capricho Arabe

Oakland
5/13/14
jbm
please also see on Hello Poetry:
Homage to Homs
Leaving Homs
Maryam of Homs
Watching Homs
Wheres Rumi?
Janek Kentigern Jul 2019
This moment, this juddering dread.
Its purely circumstantial
and it will pass
One explosive act, drunk on adrenaline I chose to be strong
for once
and Now I look where it has got me
“you did the honorable thing” they will say.
And they will be right
“for the first time in living memory”
They will add.

Scooping up the layers of ugly truths that coat this place
these walls, today, this life
like so much finely powdered snow
like so much asbestos...
easy to ignore. But never forgetten.

I wash them out out of my eyes each morning
And start my day.
Dismissing them as mere dirt.
I empty my pockets and find them there,
They are under my fingernails.
A taste in my mouth.
The parts per million build up inexorably .
I will sicken and die.
You are kind. You try to help.

But you are wrong.
Soon you are contaminated. Sickened.
This failure to do what's right
provides the background white noise to waking life
The scratching and chittering of the conscience
Like rattling pipes, Like rats in the walls
disturb sleep
you see the powdered snow
Innocently.
Trying to clear it up
hands cracked
Thinner, weary
Uncomprehending and trance-like. You have felt the sunlight dim.
You have gazed into the abyss to long…

“It's time to talk about this” you say
I resist, deny all knowledge, stare out with detatched wonder
at the swirling blizzard
of toxic flakes
That blows in through the open window.
You begin to talk about this

I cough out a weak joke,
splutter some excuses. Polluting the air with benign untruths.
Which settle in heaps about the place like finely powdered snow.
Your face it streaked with tears.
I scoop up the snow, now discolored by age and filth,
Compress it, hard like a diamond
Your face is streaked with tears
Your eyes, your ears, your pores are open,
At least you are brave enough to feel something.
You face is streaked with tears.
Your eyes bright with the still-hot fire of life, are desperate to meet mine.

Downcast, I shrink from them
Merely distracted, not happy, not sad
Solemnly kneading the crystals of poison snow in my palms...
Bent Double, wrenched inwards  in an agony of unfeeling calculation.
The task is beyond my Jellied spine.
You are pleading for me.
The man, the ******* man
To make the decision.

Somewhere beneath the layers of carcinogens an old voice, rendered unfamiliar by time is crying out.
I listen.

Unsteady. Drunk on adrenaline. I take aim.
Doubled up. Wincing. God only knows what how you felt when it hit.
When the full weight of these months of accumulated deliberation
and guilt
and truth
made contact, with the face I have kissed a thousands times before.
And now here a quiver, judder
a lame and broken invalid
I first time I made a decision.
“You did the right thing” they will say.
I pray that it's the last time.
Emma Oct 2012
crow in the field.
wide skin exposure; long exposure of the moon,
white crow in the room,
pecks asbestos off the ceiling.
soft and crumbles and
lands on the
tile

steps on the asbestos on the tile
Robert Zanfad Dec 2013
just a little bit o' asbestos
unwrapped from 'round the pipes,
yellow-green arsenic soap
in the bucket to make me clean
to eat... sump'n to munch on
like crunchy lead paint chips
and oh, how i love the smell o'
greasy diesel dip -
it reminds me of my last birthday
when we ate my smoggy cake
the kerosene ran dry that day
and smoked us to the street
our tummy aches that time forsake
'cause doctors cost real money.
but, hey, no choice in winter
- Obamacare or heat -
couldn't type his site with frostbit nubs,
no matter what the hype.
life ain't free,
so as fer me, i doctor fer myself
hell, in 50 years i've seen nothin' yet
some bourbon wouldn't fix.
but never in this tidy place we come to call our poverty
has ever lived the lovely stench
of crisp, green, perfect money.
I read that money pollutes societal interactions...
AP Staunton Jan 2016
Two inches was the measure, of young Stevies blunder,
Digging out concrete, not knowing whats under.
He felt a nugget, that wouldn't yield to the Pick,
So he used the Jack-Hammer, until he got that "kick".
Caught fire on the spot, looked at me, shocked,
Died in flames, got a days pay docked.
Cut the main cable, Fifty millimetres, metric,
I know you hate to ask, but Friends aren't Electric.

Dennis stepped back, pleased with his graft,
Fell two hundred foot, down an unguarded shaft.
Been on the Grinder, cutting out steels,
So the Elevator boys could fix , their cogs and their wheels.
Never said a word, no shout or no fuss,
Dennis died like he lived, just one of us.

Me and Baz on a roof, we knew was asbestos,
Brittle like toffee, temperamental as Kate Moss,
Had no crawling boards, so we tip-toed like burglars,
Clinging on tightly, think Ivy on Pergola's.
I heard the crack, leapt to the hip-tile,
Baz clawed and scraped, resistance was futile.
They spread out the sand, where Baz hit the deck,
To mop up the blood, from a broken neck.
Health and safety, if's and but's,
Shoddy workmanship, taking short-cuts.
We have no say, we try our best,
Hard hats, harder boots and high-visibility vests,
Are all that we leave, not Time-Shares or Merc's,
Just daughters in tears, Dads not home from work.
Ryan Topez Oct 2013
Broken Needles and rusted gates,
Treading over thorns and crushing glass in an apathetic state.
At best toss the thrown rock will crash,
Not without aggravating a storm of Asbestos.

Iron-lacking in socially acceptable art etiquette.
Climbing neglected buildings.
One hand gripping a rusted ladder,
The other, spray paint wielding.

Battling for space between the wall and the vine.
First time I don't feel misplaced, struggling for lines.
My minds at ease, I have everything I need.
A place to sit and think,

A place where the space is occupied by two high school kids.
Lighting candles that have merged
With the unstable rotting wood of the table.
Scratching their heart's words through bleeding pen nibs.

Loose leaf pages scatter the ground,
Not worthy of residency in my note book.
Reunited with the fallen leaves.
Reconciliation with my mind hook or by crook.
B May 2021
Our world was cemented fresh linoleum tile
you always bent down to reach my voice,
I was so sweet, I feel so vile.
You tell her she reminds you of daisies and August sunshine
I smell out the ***** of cinnamon, I am canine.
Thought you were all mine.

I know she's breathless
as you shake the bed,
dancing dyad, snowed with asbestos.
And I could be edgeless
sand myself down just for you.
Polish every crevice,
I am a god in a teenage body
I could be edgeless
like a marble cast of paresis
settled upon your pew.
I don't care who
hears me anymore.
I long to taste the sweet psychobabble,
so I lick my lips
and it drips out,
splattering on
the psychovirgin shoulders
of innocent bystanders.
I shrug. collateraldamage.

The loonybin flies
mumble around my face-
growling with disgust
at injustice and the
moldy, grimy consciences
laughing as they peer out
dusty boxcar windows
as the coaldust and asbestos
poison the vessels to match
the sour wine within.

I stand, marble, cold, alone,
except for sticky padding fly feet
across my lips.
The chill breeze of whispers
and the snowflakes of their
beady possum eyes
fall dead as they hit
my lifeless immortal marble.

The deadgrey stone
awaits with dread and ecstasy
the day of apocalyptic fire
when the Great marble pillars
fall victim to the gravity of all sin,
crushing the grimy greedy Watchers into pulp,
quarry-blasted Michelangelo perfection.
Sacrifice! the end of static immortality.

the flies feast on the charred and vacant carnage
katewinslet Nov 2015
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Odd Odyssey Poet Oct 2023
The skies hung heavy and black,
casting a somber mood over the world below.
It was as if the heavens themselves were
burdened with the weight of yesterday's sorrows.
The fields, once vibrant and alive, now wore a grey smile,
a reflection of the tears shed in days gone by.

As night fell, the symphony of crickets filled the air,
their chorus echoing through the stillness.
It was a quiet night, interrupted only by the
gentle handover of the sun to the moon.
The air carried a pleasant scent of dew, a reminder
of the rest that awaited all living things.
And amidst it all, the tiny footsteps of rain danced
upon the asbestos roofing, a thief of nature sneaking
into the sounds of peace.

In the midst of this atmospheric symphony,
a wooden kitchen door ticked with the passage of time.
It creaked open and closed, its rusted iron hinges
adding to the melody.
The door seemed hinged in thought,
attached by fears and darkness.
It formed a latch, and night became its key,
locking away the light and welcoming the shadows.

As I stood there, my feet grew cold,
chilled by the ice-like glass of my fragile character.
A towel hung limply from the handle of the cupboard,
a silent witness to my dry mouth and the skeletons
of my past that haunted me, beyond my control.

But amidst the darkness, comfort found
its way to my side, persistently offering solace.
It was a visitor, never truly staying,
but always there when I needed it.
In my mind, I set up a spare room,
a sanctuary for fleeting moments of respite.
And in those rare moments, a sparing thought
would gently grace my mind, offering a glimmer of hope.

Yet, even in the midst of this fragile peace,
a shadow lurked behind me.
She knew my name, intimately aware of
the battles I fought within myself.
The empty room, once a sanctuary, grew heavy
with the weight of my inner demons.
Like a fallen angel, I descended into the depths
of my own despair, the falling rain mirroring
the tears that stained my soul.
And in a whisper, a secret was revealed in my ear:
depression, depression, depression.

And so, my depressing thoughts found me once again,
enveloping me in their suffocating embrace.
The world around me faded into the background
as I became lost in the labyrinth of my own mind.
Helen Jun 2014
Where are all the carnival rides
The Ferris wheel with bright lights
The fairy floss and cherry cokes
and the warm sultry nights
The call of the racketeer
encouraging all to take a chance
Where's the monkey you carried
just so we could hold hands

Where are all the park benches
that used to ring the pond
Where are the acres of green grass
where we sat as you sang me our song

and where have all the ducks gone?

Where has gone the soda shop,
the big band dance halls
and the local Ihop?

There stands the apartment block
where our little house once stood
Where have all the children gone
that we once watched from the stoop

Where are the endless games
of hide and seek and peek a boo
Where's the night gone, the fires out
Where is the heartbeat of our intimacy we shared in our bedroom?

Its all there in the asbestos ceiling
and in the plaster that is cracked
it crinkles beneath fingers
of cold cotton bed sheets
sterile of comfort and it lacks
the vibrancy of emotions
from another lifetime
Laying still, awaiting the ground
It drifts like fog in an ageing mind
Mimi Jan 2012
Asbestos infected living;
I am the saddest ******* earth.
Coal dust
+
asbestos
+
Silicone
pull J U G U L A R  
straighten larynx
Plug my cord in.
Run:
digitized opalescent sky
Terminate process
heart exe. Cannot be found
reboot reboot reboot
sign up to facebook
sign up to dumb luck
sign up and sign off
C:/prey
C:/pray
C:/pray

that I don’t get swallowed
by this machine
that I don’t get swallowed
by this 01101101 01100001 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100101
I wanted to try something a bit avant-garde.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
to write in Latin these days, is to write the Vulgate, i am inclined to this graffiti for i abide by no cherishing of the tongue, Nietzsche said that Christianity is Platonism for the people... indeed the morphing of his maxim (God is dead) is likewise a Platonism, in that the populist reinterpretation is: Latin is dead; - so that the Vulgate might live.

we all heard it when *Dominique de Villepin
spoke
against any sort of invasion - in uncertain times we
called for uncertain measures - and all we got was
more uncertainty with a failed intelligence -
populist poetry, as you like it - keep Shakespeare on
a peddle-stool long enough and Marlowe will
join the circus - the pseudonym for one of Lady Macbeth's
lovers - i have seen the marches of protest,
common sense overruled democracy, democracy failed,
common sense suffers - Mr. Milošević (sheer as former
diacritic, and itch as the latter) is handcuffed
while the western war criminals are
patted on the shoulder while *******
their pants with excess grey of gorillas' aged backing
for the entitlement of silverback and hip-replacement -
bred by children, we are governed by children,
in the end we end up punishing children,
the Disney shadow is never far away
from western politics - populist i я fox - desert?
(if ever a rune, it'd be this AT: Ѧ - post-Babylonian
AM to consider), alter:
do i look like a ******* camel herder to you?
that's whiplash with a blink given those
camel niqabs you did arson to with Jarred Jeff Chaucer -
suits you well... je suis Jarry, et je suis Papa ****...
get your ******* pokers out
you Algerian rapists? *** zee policé! (acute e,
missing hatch) - get a breather - minus the olives
at the street-market - shingaloong - na na na na (h multiplier),
meaning there's a supposed person itemising tribal secrets -
like this Amazonian Turk sourcing out an insomnia cure
with a cross-dressing Chilean Aztec with a
postcard from Azerbaijan stitched in -
while a white boy towed a burden no admiral cared
to whisper on the frothing encapsulation
of a destroyer and the cold cod look with mermaids -
and that literally was a minded fact - meaning?
generals on first dates with goats - horned eyed they were
bashing atoms about like the Hadron Mr. Switz.
(almost wrote Hydron, alias Hydrogen, gateway
to mind, ratio 1:1, as Rodin sculpted the kiss from Dante,
Francesca and Paolo - a paperaeroplane with
the following note attached via ultra-digression
and as poet's know, no paragraph rubric or break
for afternoon tea:
they were critical of communism to perfection
with what's happening in Turkey - an Army coup d'état -
i've never seen so many politicians anorexic on a diet
of fingernails - never in my life - prior... i have the tongue,
the rhetoric of bullets aimed at your head...
a storm-trooper with a gun: i have about 1000 100m sprinters
aimed at your head... bang bang and indeed you might be dead...
bang bang bang... you're dead, and Cinderella goes
to her ballroom gown event completely solipsistic.
what the Solidarity movement criticised wasn't
Communism, they were critical of the coup d'état -
communism and automated spying,
communism's Darth Vader voice-over is matched
with automated spying - why was social media invented
if we didn't want to be informed? i can tell you
how long it takes me to ******* - and are you to beg to
differ with me? capitalism never automated spying,
it automated freedom, a sorta-post-humanism when
people were allowed to perform the ultra-perverse acts
of freedom and later told: well, you can't really write a book
after all you've done, can you? and why would a book
like that... the European convention of authority wanted
straightened Brazilian bananas anyway...
Darwin laughed with words: they got over the skew!
modern phraseology? a smiley: or?
banana's tummy to peel and topple t'eh d'oh Cherokee chop chop
awaiting a garçon for the perfumed-airs of cold espresso
served awaiting a tip nonetheless with gusto! ah, die gusto...
when it comes to printing press it came down to
the salt mines being safer than the print genesis -
meaning that with printing companies asbestos was used -
the Chinese are famous when over-shadowing cockroaches,
prime with fireworks, last with gunpowder -
prime with prints, last with... whatever writing freely
meant for democracy when freedom was to be undermined
and democracy embraced - and autocracy (mono-republicanism)
rugby tackled - i can actually see mono-republicanism,
a Saddam Hoot-Sane - and i can actually see
mono-democracy - bring in James Cameron and a dozen
start-up app. geeks... we'll debate for ~15 minutes
(as in, fashionably the doors are closed, and we closed them
because we could hardly articulate what would be the forecast
with the weather prophets about the safety mechanism
of an orange thrown up into the air, levitating
or  being brought back down in the form of orange juice at
whatever Newton assemblage was obvious) -
and so we decided it was necessary to treat each individual
mention of event non-chronologically,
but as historian supermen would, with hindsight,
quantum June , a month of the highest rekindling of the sun
to shine supreme - to not dwell in chronology,
but as heroes of hindsight, to write post-eventum as if
glorified in numbering mentions akin to Achilles, heroes
anti-prophetic and endearing the whispering of
bookworms for their agitated mention of others' glory.
Lauren Sage Apr 2013
The world is ending, the moon fell down
Left a crater in the hearts of children whose parents were now just simply gone,
Sent to the non-existent great beyond

Moneys as worthless as amateur songs,
In the end I guess the Earth won
I'm adamant to admit,
My brain's not a muscle, my mind is not strong

You risk a kiss through my face-mask
Meant to repel love and asbestos
Well if I catch your flu I fear my life is no longer
Your lifeless eyes are all I lust for

Happy
Biohazard
We're
Happy

Is it wrong I think this is romantic?
Everyone we know is dead my darling,
My heart's undead I'll admit, what if we both got bit and there was one vaccine?
Then there's NO vaccine.

We'll ramble on about everything we miss
Like electricity and Christmas
On the bright side, hen February comes to town,
I'll be the only Valentine you have around

Happy
Biohazard
We're happy

I like to forget this desert tan
Drying the sun straight from the land
I like to forget this worthless hand
Claimed by your hard, stung in the sand
I like to forget this broken heart,
I will not eat, my deaths not far

(Happy)

You won't admit that things are better
Packed up and living in this desert
Well I'm gonna miss you when you're gone, but I won't write any grieving songs
And I won't kiss the sky and hope you're there
But I'll hold your gun and live your piercing stare
i like to forget  sometimes
That I'll miss you
And your technicolor pastimes.


We're happy.

— The End —