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TG Hinchcliff Feb 2014
Her arm carries
The compass rose
Pointing North, South, East
And Best of all
Is her
Soft mutter in
Between cigarettes.
In a darkened
Bar on main street
She sat still
Enough to **** me.
2 in the morning
I gave her
Waffles
syrup
And a kiss.
I tried to push
Her further
And it only pushed
Her out
The door.
More than ever
I want more.
Sjr1000 Dec 2016
He carries a black widow spider
in his pocket
it keeps him alert,
he's tattooed from here to there
he always liked the pain,  
an endorphin ******.
He wears a Mohawk too
His belt is a live rattlesnake
he doesn't like to be bothered

He's a dangerous man in a dangerous world

He met Ray
a princess from Bakersfield
She had a smile that
opened the heart
He looked at her
He looked at his life
He had looked at one death too many

He paused
Much to his surprise
He chose life
His heart it creaked on open

She saw something in him
I'm going to have to ask her
what it was.
She turned on her healing light
offered acceptance,
When violence calls
She taps his shoulder
and no one  knows why
but he feels the warmth of the sun
rotating in his chest
he walks away,
it's okay.

Will they make it into the everlasting sunset?
Your guess is as good as mine
But for now
their love is what
legends are made of.
guy scutellaro Nov 2016
he sits on the bar stool beside her
                            too skinny
                            his flat wrinkled forehead
                            lifts brown bushy eyebrows
                            but he does not speak to her

                            she is blonde of course
                            perhaps 23
                            also skinny
                            a flat chested go go dancer
                            from new york city
                            el passo
                            bakersfield
                   ­         miamichicagomontreal
                            denver…­

                            she is with someone else

                             he thought she was his
                             but now

                             as a friend
                             she would like to buy him a shot

                             tired eyes narrow                            
                             he  stares at her as if he
                             has never lost a job
                                                                      ­                                     
                             as if no woman
                             brunette red head or blonde that he has loved
                             whose name he has tattooed onto his arm
                             has ever left him
                             as if the mail man, the priest, and his mom
                             are spitting into his stupid face
                             as if god has kicked him in the nuts
                             as if his dog has bit his hand as if
                    
                             this could never have happened to him
Big Delta airliner racing overhead , I pray all her
occupants have safe travel this gorgeous Spring day
A passenger from Atlanta scoring a big business deal ,
an elder , excited Grandma on the way to see kids in
Bakersfield
Young soldiers headed home for much needed leave ,
a blues picker leaving Nashville bound for New Orleans
Students headed back to Texas Tech , Notre Dame and
Villanova
Newlyweds on their honeymoon to San Diego , an Engineer with a meeting in Guadalajara , a family reunion in Texarkana* ...
Copyright April 27 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
The Truth Jun 2015
If you were lonely, or sad inside
Right next to you is where I'd be till the day I die.
I'd walk the 286 miles, from Bakersfield to Vegas
They would all laugh, but I would be shameless.
You are a great friend, one that cannot be replaced
My time with you, would not be put to waste.
Staying up all through the night
sitting in the dark without a light
Writing this poem, just for you
Hoping you will love this too
Those weeks we spent in a hellish place
I'd exchange for just a simple taste
To hold you close, never let go
To be the string, that holds your bow
To fight for you, hold your sword and shield
With only my heart in my hands to wield
I will try my best, to not let you get hurt
I'd pick you up, and dust off the dirt
For if you fall, it will be into my hands
I'd carry you across the sands
So Rosey Rosey come out to play
I won't be the one who betrays.
You know a secert of me noone else knows
One that I do not let show
But I am glad that you now know
I feel like I don't need to hide
Everything I am inside
Rosey Rosey Come out to Play
By your side is where I stay
waiting for you outside your home
Never leaving you alone
So Rosey Rosey, come to me
I want to give you a key
One that leads into my heart
One that can't be broken apart.
My shoulder is yours for your tears
Protecting you from all your fears
I will not allow you to fall back down
To the hole that is in the ground.
I will lend my helping hand
Pick you up to help you stand
Hoping that I can make you glad
So please cheer up, don't be sad
I promise that your smile will be real
Always stating how we feel.
So Rosey Rosey, open up
I will never let you up
I will give you all my time
So you know that you are mine.
Sharon Talbot Jul 2018
Sitting on a throne of stacks made of poems,
He rules, or thinks he does, up on his mountain.
He hates a rhyme more than
The buzzing of a fly or scuttle of a rat.
They remind him of his paucity of skill.
He rolls a magazine tight
Swings it at the rhyme, “****, ****!”
He shouts.

Up on the throne, he rambles onto paper
Vers libre, je crois.
Looking down, he sees thousands of admirers,
Coming to hear him read
His old poems of war and death, and lost love.
Only a daughter, who is “hot”, for him to ogle.
They pick up girls and eat chicken.

The past is a patchwork quilt to him,
Ragged, frayed and faded.
He screeches out memories!
Then doodles them onto the cloud,
He loves to brag
About his computers, his awards and his printed stuff.
It is all he has.

Old man staring out at the oil rigs
Of Bakersfield, he can’t rhyme about that,
The run-down houses and cracked streets.
Browned like toast by the driest air!
But he has been places, studied things,
Allegedly—what does he remember?
So he is proud, insolent in his old age.
Who can tell him what to write?
Only his publisher.
Inspired by a poet I recently met. We clashed over Form Poetry vs. Free Verse, over writing for oneself vs. publishing. He is old and set in his ways.
Whilst patrolling my fortified, Nazified, sub-tropical Florida region
I see that **** George Zimmerman's whiter than a blond Norwegian
in his self-appointed role as a *****-shooting Europoidal European
who pimps ***** to roll dipsomaniacs at Sanford's American Legion "Only **** babies in self-defense" is the unaborted rule that I live by
& "don't never impregnate no black gal who was born a black guy"
It's a-o.k. to give Sanford pigs some name that's but a phony handle
ike Kent C. Well, **** Too Tight, Robin Banks &/or Tony Candle,
Gaye Barr, Anita Bath, Harry Azcrac, Dixie Normus, Stony Mantle,
Nida ***, Lou Stools, Buster Cherry, Dixon Butts or Bony Randall,
plus Argentina's well-rotted, crapped-out actress hag Olga Zubarry,
who lived to bury ****-*****: Pork Chop Annie & Polka Jew Perry Mongols grow Occidentalized by Walmart's imported Chinese trick
& even ******-rich richer than a Bakersfield-deported Chicano hick Litters of swimmin' kittens are escaping Oscar like did Felix Unger
from the Apocalypse of Fukushima's China syndromic helix hunger Polite folk accommodate futt-bucking ******* by calling them gays
just as Wendy's accommodates idiotic patrons by giving them trays
For U.S. marines *** rights are earned during their boot-camp days
like when David Hasselhoff spent his T.V. time bay-watching bays,
in the era Reagan occupied his senile mind hoarding guns with rays while selling Latin American Marxists missiles to prove crime pays during our presidential-election cycle in its suspended-reality phase when Hawaiian babes charge nothing for their flowery, virginal leis
to celebrate the Hawaiian Babes' Free Flowery, Virginal Leis craze featuring tropical ******* & purpley nips guaranteed to amaze
in the orchid-rained-in-depths of our historically blue-blooded haze upon the moon's far side where-from souls are dispatched by Grays
there are no Jimmy Swaggart-$10-Johns anointing ***** with praise
while damning hell-fire Christians to the horror of a martyred blaze
Christmas parades Christmas parades all over this good world
Full of clowns and floats and Santa Claus yeah a party for everyone
Commentators covering the event from their box and on the road
Kids cheering the parade entrants on as they pass right through saying
** ** ** merry Christmas dudes
What a day what a day
Everywhere
Bakersfield, Winnipeg, Disneyland, Perth, Adelaide and the combined Christmas thanksgiving parade in New York
What a day what a day
Party with people cheering as they march right down the street
Saying merry Christmas and happy holidays to the people
Yeah that is rather sweet
Christmas parades Christmas parades yeah the party is on for young and old and let's get down yeah let's get down and party and say merry Christmas
Jingle bells and feliz navidad as we sing about the time when a child is born of Mary's boy child
As the angels come up and sing
Christmas parades are so much fun ready to party for everyone
Enjoy your parade and happy Christmas
Bryce Jun 2018
I almost cried thinking about you.
Your soul
all the tall tales you spun
spiders dancing across the stars now
I miss you
I never knew you
I want to
so badly
it hurts

You'd hate it here
they bastardized you
sold your words for a dime
those jewels you saw in the night
rocks.
just rocks.

that is, now
Nobody wanted that fantastic ruby sky
and ****-green mossy aquamarine
now we stare at screens.
screens.

They'll kick you off the train
eye you with suspicious gaze
if they catch you all alone
spun along some interstate

We can't do what you did anymore
try as we want to.

No running from the law
or responsibility
or inevitability
or anything quite like that

and the only time i spoke to god
he told me there was places for me to see
somewhere for me to be
someone for me to meet
and i still don't know
what that means...

I didn't have no writing buddy
my buddy left for the dusty drone of Bakersfield
and now i'm all alone
Disenchanted and enthusiastic
about all the things everyone hates
and the history that keeps sifting
like sand through the lobes of my skull

Jack, come back
give me a minute or two
maybe a vision of my wildest dreams
I'd love so much to talk to you

I keep dreaming and seeing the beauty that lies in the center of the
Tao, that long winding tao
of ancient street
with no shoes worn here in San Francisco
that imaginary terminus you dreamed
not here, silly me.
I started here
you wound your end through here

I don't know what mine'll be
Not a hemorrhage
maybe
of the brain
since that's where my troubles lie
or my prostate,
since that's where my vision lies
yours was the stomach
that great trust in gut
it let you down
and lifted you up

God didn't give me that at all
he gave it to you
oh how freeing that must have felt
to know
truly
A man like Kerouac comes once in a hundred years. that poor tortured soul-- what I wouldn't give to get to know.
Ty Muehler Jun 2014
Nobody can force me to drink
as much as
I can drink alone. Company
loves misery. So does
pleasure. God
had a revelation
that he likes candy. Nobody
held it against him. Hymns
all around: 99 Bottles,
George Thorogood, Ernest Hemming-
went away into the Paris night
or New York or ******* Bakersfield,
the leaves or the sand or
my hand clutching
my other hand. “Write drunk, edit...”
never. The land
is laid like a sheet of paper
over a gravel road. A toad
has it right when his neck
bubbles to hold his secrets,
and pops. Hopping on cops
is what happens when a pull-over
pulls me over. A job can only be held
with callused eyes, with fresh breath,
and a friendly-ish smile. Don’t hawk up too much bile
until you know
your boss’s rules. Your boss doesn’t rule!
Anything he says is an apology
for sinning, cheating on his wife,
and it’s your fault. Who else
would conceive
such a beautiful child? Who else
is there in this world? When strings vibrate,
they vibrate everywhere, and elsewhere
they are. Sound commences
and ends within a second, but
that’s much longer than my life,
my name. Nothing
strings together if you use metal. A block
of clay melts into you.
Ken Pepiton Mar 14
If ever were to be modeled here on earth,
one aspect is universal,
any exploration as
to what can be true and what seems thinkable,
has previously had expectation set
to recognize
and expand, as realizable,
in application, skeleton key-ish,
old lock tech common
in empty old buildings
- archer of life lessonings pings -
- -ng all points on the spectrum
and adding perceived Disneyifications
of storied locks, those knowledge
unlocks, always,
as truth frees,
never cursing ought but ignorance,
that such storied locks unlock I- in stages,
we barely remember
our bare first snow
of memories
with others possibly needing
my attention,
to any certain detail, tool, wrench
or spanner time seams leaking
from old skins, tied to tighten
around just right, eh,
weather whether or no,
old soul, so sure you lost your will to win,
then, another breath forces its way in.

--------------

Watching fluffed flakes
of Southern California snow, witnessed
by some, in El Niño years past, just as big as a
little paper doily under a piece of truck stop pie.

At Descanso, and also at Gorman, top of Cajon Pass.

Top of the winding six-percenter
called the grape vine, down
into Bakersfield,
across primeval subsurface saline swamp,
until a while ago, after internal combustion
and electric pumps and radio dispatch police.

Earth, earth, can you hear me now,
how is one old man expecting
to establish a true reason
to believe the cultural corrective aspect
at once, before, as now, all began
occuring because the right hand and left are inhibited,
by not inconsequential inhibitory circuits, inhibiting
unreasonable single mind superiority, internal tyrany
we are under oath to oppose,
as truth in form and function, redeemed words
effectual and fervent reproof of instructions,
taking the Mickey out of Yanks, touting
dis-Disneyification,
relieves
a form of tyranny commonly capable
of ruling a soul committed
to aliegiance and confirmation rituals early enough.

---------------

This then be a future fantasy.
Snowed in, in a Southern California
spring blizzard, blocking the hinterlands.

I sit behind my Tesla wall,
and welcome the test, was it worth it,
what price can one put on winter warmth?

How guilty should I feel for having won,
upon acceptance of the form Jesus was in,

when his word assured me I might rest assured.

Truth known makes free, form is not function.

-----------------

Historicity, I think they call,
mental time travel when you experience
life in a world lit only by fire.

Wonder if, then we think of praying men,
professional preachers of the impending

rapture, which belies all we know of gravity.
Miraculous, no less than the flying white horse,

or the horde of righteous dead coming on, behind.

And even then, there is resistant hate of brothers,
essential to trouble the minds of the greedy rich
and powerful, who constituted this world order,

this very one we live under, or within, in spirit
and in the truth the internet lets prove reproof.

----------------

Enough. We fact check, team spirit.
What can we honestly say we all know?

Six thousand years of written retellings
and retellings, and savage adversarial
herds of prophecy guided god-minded
meek as Moses Phineas knew, true
a certain variety
of the species,
with no regard
for breeding, gravitates to rhetoric
in tune with the pain perceived as needing
rebellion arrousing need --
engage disbelief, let it flow,
out the left ear is fine,
feel
relief, mindlessness
of this hard problem,
what are we about
to do, these days as we pray
with science included in grace,
due to the odds demanding,
a definite bias on Earth, to living,
like grace cheats death into agging
us into freeform ideas for hearts
to conceive as worthy
of cognosis fervency,
as at Eureka instants in prayer.

Truth, none may gainsay truth,
any may and certainly do, lie about what
Truth is behind a universal direct object, set

in the form a free spirit may hold,

not any form smoke cannot pass through,
but the form believers
accept as ours after,
spirit wise, as living words,
death, or out of body reproof
of imagination, a weform, a we,
the shock alone, makes a body think,
woe, this ain't hell but that really hurt,
bang. Same, no worse, and one last time,

I respond , "the Oxycontin is not working",
and time expands, and expands again,
and interest in worth of reason,

appears to judge my plea.
Believe me, death is not scarey, after
finishing a mortal experience in such
a time as this,

freedom from fear of death, is so freeing.
Coherence in mindtimespace is coincidental.
Insider explanation, 11-10-02023, I flat lined thrice in a medivac Bell,
it seems to have been a rebirth not possible fifty years ago, and a joy of being alive is more expressible as a corrective to all I am bound to know and defend from mental tyrannies, as many have cadres enlisted against peace.
Jack Bronson Mar 2020
It’s getting serious
We’re all ordered to stay in place
Not to go out
Over half the population of California could be infected in 8 weeks
I hope none of us in this house gets it
I want us to see this thing from a distant
As a spectator a sport
Watching this horrific moment in time pass us
Unscathed

I want that for my family
But you never know what the future will hold
The most minute detail can change the course of an entire life

I don’t want to go outside
I’m scared to
What if I get it
I’m not like these youngsters that go about like everythings fine
Seems like that there’s just a disconnect of some kind

My daughter
My daughter fly’s to Washington D.C. to visit her boyfriend
In the midst of a pandemic
She takes a flight
A flight where there are other people
A whole airport with all these people
What the hell was she thinking
She wasn’t
She’s not supposed to
She’s twenty years old

Hunker in place
That’s what I’m going to do
As supplies last
We have enough food for about a month
Got five pounds of flour today
Another ten pounds coming tomorrow
Dropped off by friends brave enough to venture out
Risk themselves for the rest
As soon as I received the groceries I walked straight to the bathroom and washed my hands

The worst is yet to come
I’m hoping it doesn’t hit Bakersfield too hard
I don’t think it will
We don’t have a major airport
No major port from sea
Our city is kind of isolated from the rest of California
Conserative
Republican leaning
The tail end of the Bible Belt

What I saw once as a vice
I now see as a benefit
Out here in the San Joaquin Valley
Our rural and isolated ways
Ways which we were criticized by real city folk
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
These ways could help keep us alive
Ken Pepiton Nov 19
aware of some
things, aware
HERE am I
there you are

near and far and nothing
in between, why
should I care, beware…

It's me,
in this world, it's me,
making up my mind, to live on,
to live on
to leave behind me, for you -

a way to go,
if you really wish to follow, if
you truly hold the hope of ever
being better than right
now,
now. Right, not wrong, right now.
You know.
You think you know, right now,

with no miracles, no little things
to see, with no joy felt shared,
with no sorrow shown in tears,
with no feet a dancin'

up on tippy toes, just a spinnin'
in time,
like a planet or a star, loopin' life
in time,
from somewhere inside, center
of heavy
of hard
of dark and cold… dark and cold…

singer… singer singing wordlessly,
la las and mmmhmmms, so so so

lighten up,
lighten up my will to be worthy,
lighten up my will to be care free,

lighten up my will to be loved, by

strangers who imagine I have
loosed some good in some shape,
loosed some good held out of sight,

strange as not cognized, coknown,
to me and you, the other end of these

lines left to prove, a second
thought… if you make joy, peace remains
enjoyable,
no mass converts to energy,
my taken peace, my inspiration never
expires, each time I miss, I miss nothing
I hit
on another decision
to make.

I laugh, and let out long rambles, through
brambles familiar
to creatures built low
to the ground
at the human
being being being more than…

Partaker of the programming.
Snipping
Re-ligamental knots, religious at-here-
ence sense so common to all here,
re-
filtered feeling manufactured, here
in living words translatable, peaceable,

easy
to use while defusing the confusion,
and allowing angelic angst ambitious umph,

committed, chance fret naught,
take the shot, think thirty aught six, BANG

Big,
nothing like the game, recoil
that's what's missing… recoil,
kick,
to remind you what Newton knew.

Not Issac, Fred Newton, from Weedpatch, Ca,
a few miles this side of Bakersfield…

He, comes up around Thanksgiving,
in the spirit now, since he's dead,

he looks at me and grins, so big.

For me to live, that  turkey must die.
old fisher of men, he knew, he'd say
a man's remembered, for the shot,

no turkey ever is,
that's something
to be thankful for.
We have a herd of Turkeys in the valley that nobody ever shoots, but you still think about it this time of year, given a chance.

— The End —