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N E Waters May 2013
This earthly body is incomprehensible. Piles of cells which make muscle, bone and nerv(ous)es. This earthly body too heavy for a spirit--too light to touch the ground. I beg you not to weigh me down.

Please

don't weigh me down. I try in earnest to touch your face, to feel for only a moment sweet flickers of skin on skin, but I grasp right through you.*

I felt about a ghost town,
ghosted around; marveled
upon shivers of what I knew
was dead. I walked
so insolently as the living
through fields that whisper
passage and rivers calling out
on moments gripped in sun.

I walked
right through
you. Ghosted around.

Scoffed at fading memories empty
pitying passages long since written down:
I read you like fiction,
ghost town: fancied myself
so solid among your intangible willows.
Ghosting around. Now
come to find seeking skin on mine I
breeze right through you.
I try a second time, a third and
come  to find it's I
who's too light for living.

It is I who passes through the solid walls
and wails in caves; it's I
who fade into night irepperable by light.
I who watched the world so arrogantly
as the living
like it would pass before MY eyes. But
here I waver unbreakable in the shaking
shining of many tiny lights.

Ghost am I.
Savio Reyes Mar 2014
We were up all thru out the terrible night
sniffling like ******* addicts
like sick little youth 1930's depression oh the Great
our fat lips hung like dying mosquitoes in the coming brothel of winter and her long scorched dress
that I inflamed with my Vietnam stolen lover zippo of gasoline
in a Sober frenzy of jealousy
now her Glare is angled narrowly at lust
tobacco
coughing up and down side ways in dreams as if I were a butterfly addicted to cigars

we were up all thru out the night
counting our skin cells
watching the television laugh at our faces
He sobbed “how the orange metallic streets
bent to our theatrical emotions on 12th street”
oh the glory of our thoughts and touch was ransom
was devil
was god
was god watching in his leather seat?
Wearing his glasses
reading the Bible?
Or does he read Russian Literature
or does he only read Latin

I and I were up all last night
guessing Morphine
using the Sister's pay-phone copper to connect with silly 3 eyed hipster hookers
their eyes wide and green with white salt like a ***** lake
that you stumble upon drunkardly with a laughing Angel
High on Cough Syrup and mortality
amused
exhilarated
passion-ated by this new opportunity for Adventure's drawback which is death or Boredom

MY innocents
is deteriorating with Age
like the alcoholic richness of 100 year old Wine
sadly
money monday
didn't go to church
hope that lady with wisdom in her hands forgives me

then I ate
now I starve
clutching at the windows
painting a boy staring at me

wondering if I were real
As I wonder if his thoughts are my own

We were up all night
translating the moon's shadows and hiccups into finger paintings and strep throat.
Filmore Townsend Feb 2013
your left breast;
we were talkin'
about cosmonauts.
heads in the clouds
with no want or
worry to never see
this sphere's crust.
we would disconnect
from they. with no
lies from the eyes
we open'd palms in
welcoming fashions.
your right breast;
lying on fetid couch,
nodding off and the
ambience was a dri-
ving bass line. little
trickle, claiming no
worse than usual.
nod, and trail'd off.
slurs and abbrevi-
ated acronyms. sta-
nding in awe of emoti-
onless lack of reaction.
Micah Jun 2015
P* erception of perfection you peep through,
Pasty pallid skin, polished and hairless too.

O rifices overloaded with objects inserted,
Onus on organs contorted and inverted.

R ated R for restricted but,
Revered in every racing, raving heart.

N o escape, never real, a never-ending reel,
Note now how it is the act and the squeal, never the feel.



I t is its own doom, on a breakfast platter, glittering,

S erving your imagination an unforgettable, unfulfilable fantasy.



A lways present to build a prison cell and still calls you free.



T rue to itself but a lie nevertheless,

R uinous rapture you have there, rupturing a future,

A way from the light to higher heights of depravity fly,

P ursue a mirage, put on its chains now.


Did you fall too?
I was hoping you'd give me a hand.
ManVsYard Nov 2014
I wonder about freedom.
A universal right to be,
who and what and where we want,
gripe and moan  and even taunt.
Type in our own, homemade font.
Or, launch a raft into the sea.

To find a place that
is more liber-ated, still.
But greed turns choice to tyrany.
The motto? Give it all to me!
Need a house? Chop down a tree.
Each day is such a thrill!

Until those pitter patters
Turn into stomping boots.
Asking who will pay the bill?
Tearing down each homebrew still.
Whats for dinner. More pig swill?!
We're looking for recruits.

Who want to live a better way
In a world much less corrupt.
We'll have good rules to keep in us line
So prisons won't explode again this time.
With committers of some petty crime.
Or just failing to keep up.
The Illusion.
That
Freedom is.
The Final solution.
Erali Miller Mar 2014
Sometimes I feel so lonely,
I just sink into the bed and bring the covers around,
fabricated an embrace.
Hannah Winand Aug 2014
“Life is, at its core, a smattering of multicolor streaks and blotches
on a knock-off Jackson ******* painting, don’t you think?”
you say between impossibly tiny sips
of your organic loose leaf herbal something-or-other tea—
or at least I think that’s what you said;
I was too distracted (by the general awfulness with which
your incomprehensibly long nose hairs
mingled with your bristly auburn mustache
as elevated nonsense poured out of your speech-hole)
to fully ingest your attempt at insightfulness.

But I reply:
“Aren’t you saying that what you’re saying doesn’t matter anyway?
Abstract expressionism, existentialism, nihilism, all that stuff?
Life has no meaning—so we better talk about it!”
Heh.

But my dialectical cynicism is no match
for your allegorical *******-ism:
“Ah, but we create meaning!
The lonely abyss of individual experience,
when shared, isn’t so lonely anymore—
Mon Dieu! This tea tastes like sunshine!”

I can’t avoid a sigh-and-eye-roll combo.
When my eyes return to the table,
I see my upside-down reflection in a dessert spoon.

          I painted a *******-esque piece in 9th grade.
          My art teacher adjusted her cat-eye glasses,
          the gold parts of her hazel irises sparkling behind them
          while she said something about the creative subconscious.
          The first drip took some self-convincing;
          the blank canvas on the floor seemed to taunt me
          with the possibility of mistake.
          At first I pretended I was ******* himself,
          trying to think the elevated nonsense he may have thought.
          It didn’t work.
          My friend told me to “just go for it,” so I did.
          I began with green for no reason at all,
          and ended with yellow for reasons that I knew existed
          but that I couldn’t explain.
          Elated, I realized my painting made sense to me.

“Would you like a sip?”
I can’t avoid a smile because
****,
this tea does taste like sunshine.
Liz McLaughlin Mar 2013
They're huddled 'round their periodic lunch tables,
square and socially pyramidal,
and I'm at the bottom.

But they're just fluorine factions,
bullies at heart trying to steal my e-lectricity
with their negativity.

Because I'm light,
Ultra-violet violence to the eyes,
Magnesium burning.
Anti-matter meets matter.

And that catalytic, cataclysmic energy is attractive.
And they see me. They see, see, see,
But I've got too many Cs on this side of my false, metallic personality.
I'd better balance myself
Or I'm not getting a good reaction.

Classic ionic, ironic idiocy.
I've bonded with you,
just compounding the issues.
'Cause you're a complete acetate without a solution:
now all I've got are problems.

Dot Diagrams are dotted lines separating you from me,
because over the years what was a bond
became a partially negative charge
against me.

I was your oxygen, and you were carbon
-ated, bubbly and explosive.
We would Combust.

But now all's left but to see, oh, two
of your new girlfriends flanking your sides,
'cause we've decomposed, split, gone off to better things.

Monatomic monotones lace my speech,
and I'm pining for something to complete this emp-d shell
that is myself.

'Cause I miss what we had.
We had chemistry.
Ken Pepiton Dec 2018
yes, it did.
Just now

right now,
the now that was a moment ago and left a mark.

Beastly meme-ish mark, a consonant glyph or a ligature,

an umph!

Right between the eyes.

right between the --- fit any jective noise ---ooof!
Umphh
ouch

eyes.

no cursem
no sworn revenge, mere wind knocked
from my sail

a seen monster blocking my sail with the shadow of his storm

Float, still as a pond on the Albatross killer's sea of green.

there never was a yellow submarine,
The one Krasner sunk in central park was fake. That was in '68.

March, maybe, ides of March keep signaling meanings
I never knew were clues.

This just happened.
I was telling a friend about the effect of seeing my first man die,
as I set the scene, March, '68…

tellin' him, it was the next day,  the next day after
we met in a chow-line at Camp Freznell Jones,

You axed, whatchewdoin here? I rolled my eyes.

You were a medic, you said if I needed
hope, you had dope…
(we had first met on the first day of first grade.)

I had shot him in the belly with a bb gun, when we were twelve.
He slugged me in the mouth for Alice Jones, when we were fifteen.
(there's a story, but it angles away from what just happened.)

We remembered a time.

March 1968, about a week after My Lai,
we were
nineteen year olds, schooled together  in good citizenship,
since we were six,
in the year 1954. when
President Eisenhauer,

personally, we heard,

had added two words,
under and God,
to the good citizen allegiance pledge
all first grade good-citizens-to-be
were learning again,

because the new pledge meant more than the old pledge had.
That had needed to be done.

Or the commies were going to get a cobalt bomb
and blow the whole world to heck.
Per Boy's Life, the scouting mag.

This was explained by the fact that there were no escapes
from prisoner of war camps in Korea,
the commies were at
war against God,

that was explained when a captured secret brainwashing plan revealed:

the lack of knowing why America was worth dying for in Korea, among
the U.N. G.I.  little brothers and younger cousins

of the greatest generation's victorious G.I.
warrior heroes, every one,
so steeped in esprit dee corp,
the ones who could would march in Parades for fifty years.

But
Those
tweener losers twixt the survivors of first
wave greatest generation warriors and  us
(Talkin' bout my generation, we didn't die before we got old),

those guys nee-cess-it-ated,

Purely from lack of knowing, never having been taught

the Uniform Code of Military Justice and that our
allegiance is and was pledged to a nation under God.

Both which were new information
maybe our moms and dads didn't know yet,
we could teach them for homework
the new pledge and ask for dimes
for the march of dimes
at the same time.

Echo
The boom of babes
just beginning citizenship training for the war
they would fight, but right,
they would know,
because the commies,
could not infiltrate our schools and teach lies…

The boom of babes
just beginning citizenship training for the war
they would fight, but right,

like all the men in town who served and survived the real war,
the world war,
not a Po-lease action,
and who,
if they were shot down (no fault of their own, ****** Red Baron)
they escaped
in movie quality dramatic ways
from prisoner of war camps in Germany,

(Not many escapes from Japanese
prisoner of war camps,
but Islands account for much of that. Sharks.)

Echo
the boom of babes
just beginning citizenship training for the war
they would fight, but right,
that boom of fresh new cannon fodder for the future,

we needed to know
we were pledging, promising to pay with our life, no lie,

I pledged, we all pledged knowing, no mistake,
God is on our side,
we are, as a nation, as a citizen of this nation,
under god.
From now on.

We all stand.

--- that was all flash back---
What just happened was Doc Musgrove stopped my tale,
my telling of the first death
I watched

He remembered
He was a medic
He cleaned the mess I watched that left this stain.
He carried the bodies.

I walked away.
Then fifty years later, I figured it wouldn't hurt to tell.
But it does.
You, generations after ours, remember war
does not make better people of good citizens who know

allegiance means allied with, not ruled by.

Liege lords are things of the past. That's why the statues always fall.

We are free because truth, when known, makes us free.
Wars make no man free.

If you can't love your enemy, that's no excuse.
Set a standard, high as you can imagine,
based on the good you know is good,

{no this is not preaching it is sharing, so you don't suffer from lack of knowing and say nobody shared what he learned after becoming the definition of a heretic.}

exercise your self, discipline your self
become a disciple of good
for goodness sake
do what you know is good
as if it were being done to you

and enemies become others who maybe
you could see things like, if

you looked from a higher plane.

Yes, I dare, I was dared. An Indian kid dared me to prove
I inherited the wind.
While planning a pod cast we realized we were speaking of the same incident, fifty years ago.
Ken Pepiton Feb 2023
Artificial Art or Actual Intelligence

Wednesday, July 3, 2019
3:21 PM
A Warholian screen ing com-
prized of Ben Day dots and
Eddy Bernays ways and
means co-mitt-ee messages encode
ing
ding ding
our baser nature to re
spond
sponsoring

dangerous living, the massive multi player
virtual game

permanent war module

experience the old days, release
thy unbelief and find

the final next evil opposer allotted
to make up our
quotidian bit
of evil

sufficient to keep us watching,
set
still as stone. Are we not the gargoyles?

Do not we see all we are imagined to see,
asif you saw
as we see from
the flying buttresseees?

What did you imagine gargoyles depicted?
Messengers or guardians,
or both, but imaginary,

immaterial beings framing force fields we all agree
keep us safe
safe and sound found
solid, though we know solid is

not, really, the state we imagined it was.
How can I help seeing what is before my eyes,
axed Winston Smith

he was told,
reminded, as it is wont to be, after learning a lie is true,

It is not easy to become sane, {re-sane}

have you ever believed a matter for your own sake?
Sake is an old spoke word, alte sprache
you own it, do you not?
Your own sake?

Have you not done and can recall doing all things well?
Are you not a member, in good standing, of

The National Honor Society Facebook group?
{werefriends-fiendish}
Suffer it to be so, there are lies yet.
There are lie believers in our midst.

Put up with peace where you are, if you find
In sequence

All things working work to get here,
there is where all nonworking things went.

This is where my heart is working,
and my lungs,
and nerves and bones and sinyew
tying my

being to earth,
with its salty sea and wobbly orbit
It is al
ways where you last looktook
- Holden been seen
rooks were some birds, then some
gamespiece in a game of
actual thrones,
by damnif I'danoticed

see,
it all works out, Don Draper said that
to Falstaff.

I see a man who is not happy the message being
what,
what is this team of
whatever
I see saying to me? On TV? How

long has this gone on?
This noise in words and music surrounding me constantly my brain evolved
to watch tv with no screen as if this

were radio in the flow
of things
imagined green by R.W.Shambach, radio preacher
all surfaces in his heavenly city reflect green light
soundtrektricktract

behind my mind is a melody from
some *******
TV Show aimed at me

For goodness sake,
some one questioned my saying
life's been good to me

life? with that unsaid, DOn't you mean Jesus?

dripping in the tone.
Life truth and way, i go. Wiseassish.
is it not the wombed man
who empowers the unwombed
to make
seed?

Mito chondro donchaknow
Life is but a dream
on steroids
in a redneck metaphor I oughta
known better
but the flow is worth more
than arhyme
any time so if your muse is iambic and mine is frantic
BE IT KNOWN K-CLASH-ic

there were beasts released

leasing
the idea, how long shall we
love this lending and leasing of

the best possible now
paid for by

time, time pays all the debts and we be
forgiven if we can get the gift of
given for
real
let me
free why doncha,

girl... when did the program begin,
when was the boot code
sealed
in silicon tipped in gold

was there a mark made? can
you
buy or sell. whatever the hell’yawish?
testing waters for temperature and pressure
assure me
it works this way

the hero dies or
gets old and wise

other wise – he leaves nothing
but wildass mule tales
wise in other times
as real as was any said-so historical fact,
the telling of the act
as facts, not
actual
but similar to reality on so many levels we
the acts we
all imagine, I am familiar with these
first person ideas in pluralmind
ideas, I can see the irony,
I can see the lies

I can assume the same historical act
I acted in fact
actually happened to you as it did.
silly man,
silly once was paired with
will- willingness
a will blessed blissish beyond
a wished
sill
edge of ever
windowed worlds from the core

courage, baggage of the heart

you get yoost to seeing the things
we all see all the time
used right we all
let them be
as real as real can be but
that
changes
nothing into less than we imagined

I don't think about you at all, do I?
You are
imaginedary. I imagine, dear reader, each
key
you see
strike sound in y'our mind one key ringinatime

and a time and another
timed half meant to be gin
but genius we

dis sip cip ated ante anti cipt

mist scryptic letter let us let this be true

me and you, imagine we liv in the words
we make peace as effort
an anomo nemo fingo non namable ibility
ifity boo...

that has worked several times for me I daren't say
it is in evit able vitaminwise

e-normous meaning lies in e, pluralized, unumus

easy and free are we,
the society so
named.

An I and I an I and I an Iii and eye am I
Horus was the story,
I, the eye.
Perhaps the one Odin made sacred,
the eye given for an eye, that
the stories mention;
with a wink.

Blink.
And we passed aha in a a a a a a a a
O
me
ga
damnitalt
erhell

For a moment there, I thought
this as real as it felt
at the time.
games from the old man's memory
and
nothing
is real becomes it is knowing
and we are ina olde John Lennon
stumble into ting taut tight
attention to nothing trap

farleftkey to infinity, via dirac, sorry

more thanoneshouldevah
know
first
hand. vicar-cure-ious and al

Spirits in neon
Curios, too.
Gypsy Garden
nee Coronado Court
not far from where Jungle Smoke and Vape
existed in Kingman, Arizona

fifty years later,

to the freaking Planksec muthafuggah!

Now,
where was the kachina?

You missed him. You never glimpsed the god that spat upon ye
and ye wonder why life's been s'****** crazy,

I swanee, no lie, I smell some odd smells in my time

though none smelled so off as this, in the beginning,
Rot in Denmark
Red Fog OVer America

And the lift that went down to hell, was that the same guy
'wrote the sybil circa

the times when Giles Goatboy was awaiting Godot, no?
Those days. Mon trick you you late,

too late. We the Society, have agreed.
You know. Please.
Remember.

ANDNANDnANSc I-hence can afford to say I said this freely,
It cost you something to read it, and I enjoyed the experience,
being imagined in a reader/writer we with thee.
That’s the prize, find the peace you made and cast it together
INTO OUR INHERITED WIND- is this a yoke, is it not light? Humor
say, please send me the money.  We agreed, if I heard right.
When I sold out, to plug Pär Fabian Lagerkvist.
You know, on the elevator… that went… well, now, here we are again.
My life in 2023
Hailey Hernandez Nov 2014
And it kills me
to know
that you would much rather
open a bottle
of raspberry *****
than open up yourself
to me.
August 18th 2014
And nothing has changed
opaquefury Apr 2013
I gawk
at the way your calloused hands
can graze my skin
scraping apart
what little sanity
I've got left--
pieces
of fabric-
               ated thoughts
and memories
litter our feet like fallen
leaves in Autumn.

I laugh
at the way
you rock cliches silently
into omission,
cleaning the rest of the world
of originality
and three word stories
that play like music boxes
sprinkling magic
into my ears
like I was a child again.

I even dance
in rooms with that creaking wood
sound
we love,
easing into step
with our momentum
on heavy nights
of weary thoughts
that rattled our minds
tired,
breathing heavily and easily
all throughout
our little
drumming
and howls,
making songs from free
style instruments.

I think of how
I still hum myself to sleep
with our tempo
long after the music box
has stopped playing.

— The End —