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g clair Aug 2014
SING the lines sweetly
not harsh or deranged
VERSES put neatly
to music arranged
IN four part harmony
music is kissed
HARMONY'S  angels
sing sevenths in mist...

Distant, my father
yet so close to me
singing his part  
to an old melody
someday we'll see him
for Jesus is there
Barbershop harmony
filling the air

sing with me sweetly
not harsh or deranged
verse written neatly
to music arranged....
AAron Roz May 2018
Music is loud or quiet.
Music is soft or heavy.
Music can have meaning or not.
Music can be nothing or everything.
Music is:
◾Art Punk
◾Alternative Rock
◾College Rock
◾Crossover Thrash (thx Kevin G)
◾Crust Punk (thx Haug)
◾Experimental Rock
◾Folk Punk
◾Goth / Gothic Rock
◾Grunge
◾******* Punk
◾Hard Rock
◾Indie Rock
◾Lo-fi (hat tip to Ben Vee Bedlamite)
◾New Wave
◾Progressive Rock
◾Punk
◾Shoegaze (with thx to Jackie Herrera)
◾Steampunk (with thx to Christopher Schaeffer)

•Anime
•Blues ◾Acoustic Blues
◾Chicago Blues
◾Classic Blues
◾Contemporary Blues
◾Country Blues
◾Delta Blues
◾Electric Blues
◾Ragtime Blues (cheers GFS)

•Children’s Music ◾Lullabies
◾Sing-Along
◾Stories

•Classical ◾Avant-Garde
◾Baroque
◾Chamber Music
◾Chant
◾Choral
◾Classical Crossover
◾Contemporary Classical (thx Julien Palliere)
◾Early Music
◾Expressionist (thx Mr. Palliere)
◾High Classical
◾Impressionist
◾Medieval
◾Minimalism
◾Modern Composition
◾Opera
◾Orchestral
◾Renaissance
◾Romantic (early period)
◾Romantic (later period)
◾Wedding Music

•Comedy ◾Novelty
◾Standup Comedy
◾Vaudeville (cheers Ben Vee Bedlamite)

•Commercial (thank you Sheldon Reynolds) ◾Jingles
◾TV Themes

•Country ◾Alternative Country
◾Americana
◾Bluegrass
◾Contemporary Bluegrass
◾Contemporary Country
◾Country Gospel
◾Country Pop (thanks Sarah Johnson)
◾***** Tonk
◾Outlaw Country
◾Traditional Bluegrass
◾Traditional Country
◾Urban Cowboy

•Dance (EDM – Electronic Dance Music – see Electronic below – with thx to Eric Shaffer-Whiting & Drew :-)) ◾Club / Club Dance (thx Luke Allfree)
◾Breakcore
◾Breakbeat / Breakstep
◾Brostep (cheers Tom Berckley)
◾Chillstep (thx Matt)
◾Deep House (cheers Venus Pang)
◾Dubstep
◾Electro House (thx Luke Allfree)
◾Electroswing
◾Exercise
◾Future Garage (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Garage
◾Glitch Hop (cheers Tom Berckley)
◾Glitch Pop (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Grime (thx Ran’dom Haug / Matthew H)
◾*******
◾Hard Dance
◾Hi-NRG / Eurodance
◾Horrorcore (thx Matt)
◾House
◾Jackin House (with thx to Jermaine Benjamin Dale Bruce)
◾Jungle / Drum’n’bass
◾Liquid Dub(thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Regstep (thanks to ‘Melia G)
◾Speedcore (cheers Matt)
◾Techno
◾Trance
◾Trap (thx Luke Allfree)

•Disney
•Easy Listening ◾Bop
◾Lounge
◾Swing

•Electronic ◾2-Step (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾8bit – aka 8-bit, Bitpop and Chiptune – (thx Marcel Borchert)
◾Ambient
◾Bassline (thx Leon Oliver)
◾Chillwave(thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Chiptune (kudos to Dominik Landahl)
◾Crunk (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Downtempo
◾Drum & Bass (thx Luke Allfree)
◾Electro
◾Electro-swing (thank you Daniel Forthofer)
◾Electronica
◾Electronic Rock
◾Hardstyle (kudos to Dominik Landahl)
◾IDM/Experimental
◾Industrial
◾Trip Hop (thank you Michael Tait Tafoya)

•Enka
•French Pop
•German Folk
•German Pop
•Fitness & Workout
•Hip-Hop/Rap ◾Alternative Rap
◾Bounce
◾***** South
◾East Coast Rap
◾Gangsta Rap
◾******* Rap
◾Hip-Hop
◾Latin Rap
◾Old School Rap
◾Rap
◾Turntablism (thank you Luke Allfree)
◾Underground Rap
◾West Coast Rap

•Holiday ◾Chanukah
◾Christmas
◾Christmas: Children’s
◾Christmas: Classic
◾Christmas: Classical
◾Christmas: Comedy
◾Christmas: Jazz
◾Christmas: Modern
◾Christmas: Pop
◾Christmas: R&B
◾Christmas: Religious
◾Christmas: Rock
◾Easter
◾Halloween
◾Holiday: Other
◾Thanksgiving

•Indie Pop
•Industrial
•Inspirational – Christian & Gospel ◾CCM
◾Christian Metal
◾Christian Pop
◾Christian Rap
◾Christian Rock
◾Classic Christian
◾Contemporary Gospel
◾Gospel
◾Christian & Gospel
◾Praise & Worship
◾Qawwali (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Southern Gospel
◾Traditional Gospel

•Instrumental ◾March (Marching Band)

•J-Pop ◾J-Rock
◾J-Synth
◾J-Ska
◾J-Punk

•Jazz ◾Acid Jazz (with thx to Hunter Nelson)
◾Avant-Garde Jazz
◾Bebop (thx Mwinogo1)
◾Big Band
◾Blue Note (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Contemporary Jazz
◾Cool
◾Crossover Jazz
◾Dixieland
◾Ethio-jazz (with thx to Jillian Edwards)
◾Fusion
◾Gypsy Jazz (kudos to Mike Tait Tafoya)
◾Hard Bop
◾Latin Jazz
◾Mainstream Jazz
◾Ragtime
◾Smooth Jazz
◾Trad Jazz

•K-Pop
•Karaoke
•Kayokyoku
•Latin ◾Alternativo & Rock Latino
◾Argentine tango (gracias P. Moth & Sandra Sanders)
◾Baladas y Boleros
◾Bossa Nova (with thx to Marcos José Sant’Anna Magalhães & Alex Ede for the reclassification)
◾Brazilian
◾Contemporary Latin
◾Cumbia (gracias Richard Kemp)
◾Flamenco / Spanish Flamenco (thank you Michael Tait Tafoya & Sandra Sanders)
◾Latin Jazz
◾Nuevo Flamenco (and again Michael Tafoya)
◾Pop Latino
◾Portuguese fado (and again Sandra Sanders)
◾Raíces
◾Reggaeton y Hip-Hop
◾Regional Mexicano
◾Salsa y Tropical

•New Age ◾Environmental
◾Healing
◾Meditation
◾Nature
◾Relaxation
◾Travel

­•Opera
•Pop ◾Adult Contemporary
◾Britpop
◾Bubblegum Pop (thx Haug & John Maher)
◾Chamber Pop (thx Haug)
◾Dance Pop
◾Dream Pop (thx Haug)
◾Electro Pop (thx Haug)
◾Orchestral Pop (thx Haug)
◾Pop/Rock
◾Pop Punk (thx Makenzie)
◾Power Pop (thx Haug)
◾Soft Rock
◾Synthpop (thx Haug)
◾Teen Pop

•R&B/Soul ◾Contemporary R&B
◾Disco (not a top level genre Sheldon Reynolds!)
◾Doo ***
◾Funk
◾Modern Soul (Cheers Nik)
◾Motown
◾Neo-Soul
◾Northern Soul (Cheers Nik & John Maher)
◾Psychedelic Soul (thank you John Maher)
◾Quiet Storm
◾Soul
◾Soul Blues (Cheers Nik)
◾Southern Soul (Cheers Nik)

•Reggae ◾2-Tone (thx GFS)
◾Dancehall
◾Dub
◾Roots Reggae
◾Ska

•Rock ◾Acid Rock (with thanks to Alex Antonio)
◾Adult-Oriented Rock (thanks to John Maher)
◾Afro Punk
◾Adult Alternative
◾Alternative Rock (thx Caleb Browning)
◾American Trad Rock
◾Anatolian Rock
◾Arena Rock
◾Art Rock
◾Blues-Rock
◾British Invasion
◾**** Rock
◾Death Metal / Black Metal
◾Doom Metal (thx Kevin G)
◾Glam Rock
◾Gothic Metal (fits here Sam DeRenzis – thx)
◾Grind Core
◾Hair Metal
◾Hard Rock
◾Math Metal (cheers Kevin)
◾Math Rock (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Metal
◾Metal Core (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Noise Rock (genre – Japanoise – thx Dominik Landahl)
◾Jam Bands
◾Post Punk (thx Ben Vee Bedlamite)
◾Prog-Rock/Art Rock
◾Progressive Metal (thx Ran’dom Haug)
◾Psychedelic
◾Rock & Roll
◾Rockabilly (it’s here Mark Murdock!)
◾Roots Rock
◾Singer/Songwriter
◾Southern Rock
◾Spazzcore (thx Haug)
◾Stoner Metal (duuuude)
◾Surf
◾Technical Death Metal (cheers Pierre)
◾Tex-Mex
◾Time Lord Rock (Trock) ~ (thanks to ‘Melia G)
◾Trash Metal (thanks to Pierre A)

•Singer/Songwriter ◾Alternative Folk
◾Contemporary Folk
◾Contemporary Singer/Songwriter
◾Indie Folk (with thanks to Andrew Barrett)
◾Folk-Rock
◾Love Song (Chanson – merci Marcel Borchert)
◾New Acoustic
◾Traditional Folk

•Soundtrack ◾Foreign Cinema
◾Movie Soundtrack (thanks Julien)
◾Musicals
◾Original Score
◾Soundtrack
◾TV Soundtrack

•Spoken Word
•Tex-Mex / Tejano (with thx to Israel Lopez) ◾Chicano
◾Classic
◾Conjunto
◾Conjunto Progressive
◾New Mex
◾Tex-Mex

•Vocal ◾A cappella (with kudos to Sheldon Reynolds)
◾Barbershop (with thx to Kelly Chism)
◾Doo-*** (with thx to Bradley Thompson)
◾Gregorian Chant (hat tip to Deborah Knight-Nikifortchuk)
◾Standards
◾Traditional Pop
◾Vocal Jazz
◾Vocal Pop

•World ◾Africa
◾Afro-Beat
◾Afro-Pop
◾Asia
◾Australia
◾Cajun
◾Calypso (thx Gerald John)
◾Caribbean
◾Carnatic (Karnataka Sanghetha – thx Abhijith)
◾Celtic
◾Celtic Folk
◾Contemporary Celtic
◾Coupé-décalé (thx Samy) – Congo
◾Dangdut (thank you Achmad Ivanny)
◾Drinking Songs
◾Drone (with thx to Robert Conrod)
◾Europe
◾France
◾Hawaii
◾Hindustani (thank you Abhijith)
◾Indian Ghazal (thank you Gitika Thakur)
◾Indian Pop
◾Japan
◾Japanese Pop
◾Klezmer
◾Mbalax (thank you Samy) – Senegal
◾Middle East
◾North America
◾Ode (thank you Sheldon Reynolds)
◾Piphat (cheers Samy B) – Thailand
◾Polka
◾Soca (thx Gerald John)
◾South Africa
◾South America
◾Traditional Celtic
◾Worldbeat
◾Zydeco
etc...
Unity Drain Dec 2013
The aftermath of poorly applied algebra is a scramble of numbers, letters, lonely coefficients, and an unemployed ninjas. These characters are much like those of a barbershop quartet, where members can either harmonize or simply fall flat. All of this depends on the song they sing and the order it is sung; algebra sings a song of SVSCOS (Same Variables Same Coefficients Opposite Sides) What else can come of bad math? Nothing less than a burning hatred for radicals, imaginary numbers, the saying 'PEMDAS', or maybe the fact that if you're 21 you must stay out the bars. This being said, Algebra 2 is very much like a dream; once you wake up, most of it is forgotten, but also in that it can be strived toward and reached.
Karen Newell Sep 2014
Back to the Barbershop,
where grown men
spill their Secrets.

Snippets of hair
fall to the floor
with tiny bits
of their
Soul.
Richard Riddle Jan 2015
It's an old, run-down, brick building-
with some pickup trucks, and a John Deere tractor-parked in front-
It has been there for many years-
with many memories in its 'font.

Why, that building knew your folks, the children,
watched generations come and go thru that door-
It waved good-bye to new recruits
as they left to go to war.

It became a sort of, "meet and greet"
Where folks would come , take a seat-
the coffee urn, filled to the brim
for those waiting to get a trim.
(and for anyone else who wandered in)

And the stories! Oh Lord, the stories!
One would start with an anecdote-
another followed with a joke-
then another, each trying to top the other.

Folks would laugh so hard, you'd think they were die'n-
for there was no way to know
Who was telling a truth,
and who was lie'n-
(a determination that never could be made)

A great way to end the week!

The building had no signs, because everyone knew what it was,
so why spend the money to tell folks something they already knew.
Then, one day this appeared on the door:

"Welcome Stranger! Come in and see!"
"The One and Only Barbershop"
                      "Where the BS flows like the River Nile, and the coffee's always free!"
(Open on Saturdays 7-3)
Closed Mon-Fri

copyright: richard riddle January 27, 2015
My father, for 20 years, was a game warden for the State of Texas. I  would often ride with him on weekends throughout his 6 county district, stopping at many of these small, rural, unincorporated communities. It was, as we say, "a real hoot."
Song one
This is a song about tarzanic love
That subsisted some years ago,
As a love duel between an English girl and an African ogre,
There was an English girl hailing along the banks of river Thames
She had stubbornly refused all offers for marriage,
From all the local English boys, both rich and poor
tall and short, weak or strong, ugly and comely in the eye,
the girl had refused and sternly refused the treats for love,
She was disciplined to her callous pursuit of her dream
to marry a mysterious,fantastic,lively,original and extra-ordinary man,
That no other woman in history of human marriage ever married,
She came from London, near the banks of river Thames,
Her name was Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill, daughter of a peasant,
She came from a humble English family, which hustled often
For food, clothing, and other calls that make one an ordinary British,
She grew up without a local boy friend, anywhere in the English world,
She is the first English girl to knock the age of forty five while a ******,
She never got deflowered in her teens as other English girls usually do
She preserved her purse with maximal carefulness in her wait for a black man,
Her father, of course a peasant, his trade was human barber and horse shearer,
Often asked her what she wants in life before her marriage, which man she really wanted,
Her specification was an open eyesore to her father; no blinkers could stave the father’s pale
For she wanted a black tall man, strong and ruggedly dark in the skin, must own a kingdom,
Fables taken to her from Africa were that such an African man was only one but none else,
His glorious name was Akhatembete kho bwibo khakhalikha no bwoya,
When the English girl heard the chimerical name of her potential husband,
She felt a super bliss in her spine; she yearned for the day of her rendezvous,
She crashed into desperate burning for true English love
With a man with a wonderful name like Akhatembete kho bwibo khakhalikha no bwoya.


Song two

Rumours of this English despair and dilemma for love reached Africa, in the wrong ears,
Not the human ears, but unfortunately the ears of the ogres, seasoned in the evil art,
It was received and treated as classified information among the African ogress,
They prevented this news to leak to African humans at all at all
Lest humans enjoy their human status and enjoy most
The love in the offing from the English girl,
They thus swiftly plotted and ployed
To lure and win the ******
From royal land;
England.




Song three

Firstly, the African ogres recruited one of their own
The most handsome middle aged male ogre, more handsome than all in humanity,
And of course African ogres are beautiful and handsome than African humans, no match,
The ogres are more gifted in stature, physique, eugenics and general overtures
They always outplay African humans on matters of intelligence, they are shrewder,
Ogres are aggressive and swashbuckling in manners; fear is none of their domain
Craft and slyness is their breakfast, super is the result; success, whether pyrrhic or Byronic,
Is their sweetest dish, they then schemed to get the English girl at whatever cost,
They made a move to name one of their fellow ogres the name of dream man;
Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha no bwoya,
Which an English girl wanted,
By viciously naming one of their handsome middle-aged man this name.

Song four

Then they set off 0n foot, from Congo moving to the north towards Europe abode England,
Where the beautiful girl of the times, Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill hail,
They were three of them, walking funnily in cyclopic steps of African ogres,
Keeping themselves humorously high by feigning how they will dupe the girl,
How they will slyly decoy the English village pumpkin of the girl in to their trap,
And effortlessly make her walk on foot from England to Africa, in pursuit of love
On this muse and sweet wistfulness they broke out into loud gewgaws of laughter,
In such emotional bliss they now jump up wildly forgetting about their tails
Which they initially stuffed inside white long trousers, tails now wag and flag crazily,
Feats of such wild emotions gave the ogres superhuman synergy to walk cyclopically,
A couple of their strides made them to cross Uganda, Kenya, Somali, Ethiopia and Egypt
Just but in few days, as sometimes they ran in violent stampedes
Singing in a cryptic language the funny ogres songs;

Dada wu ndolelee!
Dada wu ndolelee!
Kuyuni kwa mnja
Sa kwingile khundilila !

Ehe kuyuni Mulie!
Ehe kuyuni mulie!
Omukhana oyo
Kaloba khuja lilia !
They then laughed loudly, farted cacophonously and jumped wildly, as if possessed,
They used happiness and raucous joy as a strategy to walk miles and miles
Which you cover when moving on foot from Congo to England,
They finally crossed Morocco and walked into Europe,
They by-passed Italy and Spain walking piecemeal
into England, native land of the beautiful girl.

Song  five

When the three ogres reached England, they were all surprised
Every woman and man was white; people of England walked slowly and gently
They made minimum noise, no shouting publicly on the street,
a stark contrast to human behaviour and ogre culture in Africa, very rambunctious,
Before they acclimatized to disorderly life in England, an over-sighted upset befell them
Piling and piling menace of pressure to ****,
Gripped all the three ogre brothers the same time,
None of them had knowledge of municipal utilities,
They all wanted to micturated openly
Had it not been beautiful English girls
Ceaselessly thronging the streets.



Song six

They persevered and moved on in expectation of coming to the end,
Out-skirt of the strange English town so that they can get a woodlot,
From where they could hide behind to do open defecation
All was in vain; they never came to any end of the English town,
Neither did they come by a tumbled-down house
No cul de sac was in sight, only endless highway,
Sandwiched between tall skyscraping buildings,
One of the ogres came up with an idea, to drip the ****
Drop by drop in their *******, as they walk to their destiny,
They all laughed but not loudly, in controlled giggles
And executed the idea minus haste.

Song seven

They finally came down to the banks of river Thames,
Identified the home of Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill
The home had neither main gate nor metallic doors,
They entered the home walking in humble majesty,
Typical of racketeering ogre, in a swindling act,
The home was silent, no one in sight to talk to
The ogres nudged one another, repressing the mirth,
Hunchbacked English lass surfaced, suddenly materialized
Looking with a sparkle in the eye, talking pristine English,
Like that one written by Geoffrey Chaucer, her words were as piffling
As speech of a mad woman at the fish market, ogres looked at her in askance.

Song eight

An ogre with name Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya opened to talk,
Asked the girl where could be the latrine pits, for micturation only,
The hunchbacked lass gave them a direction to the toilets inside the house,
She did it in a full dint of English elegance and gentility,
But all the ogres were discombobulated to their peak
about the English latrine pit inside the house,
they all went into the toilet at the same time,
to the chagrin of the hunchbacked lass
she had never seen such in England
she struggled a lot
to repress her mirth
as the English
never get amused
at folly.




Song nine

It is a tradition among the ogres to ****,
Whenever they are ******* in the African bush,
But now the ogres are in a fix, a beautiful fix of their life
If at all they ****, the flatulent cacophony will be heard outside
By the curious eavesdroppers under the eaves of the house,
They murmured among themselves to tighten their **** muscles
So that they can micturated without usual African accomplice; the tweeee!
All succeeded to manage , other than Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
Who urinated but with a low tziiiiiiii sound from his ***, they didn’t laugh
Ogres walked out of privities relaxed like a catholic faithful swallowing a sacrament,
The hunchback girl ushered them to where they were to sit, in the common room
They all sat with air of calm on their face, Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
led the conversation, by announcing to the girl that he is Victoria’s visitor from Africa,
To which the girl responded with caution that Victoria is at the barbershop,
Giving hand to her father in shearing the horses, and thus she is busy,
No one is allowed to meet her, at that particular hour of the day
But he pleaded to the hunchback girl only to pass tidings to Victoria,
That Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya from Africa
Has arrived and he is yearning to meet her today and now,
The girl went bananas on hearing the name
The hunch on her back visibly shook,
Is like she had heard the name often,
She then became prudent in her senses,
And asked the visitor not to make anything—
Near a cat’s paw out of her person,
She implored the visitor to confirm
if at all he was what he was saying
to which he confirmed in affirmation,
then she went out swiftly
like a tail of the snake,
to pass tidings
to her sister
Victoria.


Song ten
She went out shouting her sister’s name,
A rare case to happen in England,
One to make noise in the broad day light,
With no permission from the local leadership,
She called and ululated Victoria’ name for Victoria to hear
From wherever she was, of which she heard and responded;
What is the matter my dear little sister? What ails you?
Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya is around!
She responded back in voice disturbed by emotional uproar,
What! My sister why do you cheat me in such a day time?
Am not cheating you my sister, he is around sited in our father’s house,
Is he? Have you given him a drink, a sweet European brandy?
My sister I have not, I feared that I may mess up your visitors
With my hunched shoulders, I feared sister forbid,
Ok, I am coming, running there, tell him to be patient,
Let me tell him sister just right now,
And make sure you come before his patience is stretched.





Song eleven

Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill almost went berserk
On getting this good tidings about the watershed presence,
Of the long awaited suitor, her face exploded into vivacity,
Her heart palpitating on imagination of finally getting the husband,
She went out of the barber shop running and ululating,
Leaving her father behind, confounded and agape,
She came running towards her father’s main house
Where the suitor is sited, with the chaperons,
She came kicking her father’s animals to death,
Harvesting each and every fruit, for the suitor,
She did marvel before she reached where the suitor was;
Harvested ten bananas, mangoes and avocadoes,
Plums, pepper, watermelons, lemons and oranges,
She kicked dead five chicken, five goats, rams,
Swine, rabbits, rats, pigeons and hornbills,
When she reached the house, she inquired to know,
Who among them could be the one; Akhatembete Khobwibo
Khakhalikha no bwoya, But her English vocals were not guttural enough,
She instead asked, who among you is a key tempter go weevil car no lawyer?
The decoy ogre promptly responded; here I am the queen of my heart. He stood up,
Victoria took the ogre into her arms, whining; babie! Babie, babie, come!
Victoria carried the ogre swiftly in her arms, to her tidy bed room,
She placed the ogre on her bed, kissed one another at a rate of hundred,
Or more kisses per a minute, the kissing sent both of them crazy, but spiritual craft,
That gave the ogre a boon to maintain some sobriety, but libido of virginity held Victoria
In boonless state of ****** feat, defenseless and impaired in judgment
It extremely beclouded her judgment; she removed and pulled of their clothes,
Libidinous feat blurring her sight from seeing the scarlet tail projecting
From between the buttocks of the ogre, vestige of *******,
She forcefully took the ogre into her arms, putting the ogre between her legs,
The ogre’s uncircumcised ***** effectively penetrated Victoria’s ****** purse,
The ogre broke virginity of Victoria, making her to feel maximum warmth of pleasure
As it released its germinal seed into her body, ecstasy gripped her until she fainted,
The ogre erected more on its first *******; its ***** became more stiff and sharp,
It never pulled out its ***** from the purse of Victoria, instead it introduced further
Deeper and deeper into Victoria’s ******, reaching the ****** depth inside her with gusto,
Victoria screamed, wailed, farted, scratched, threw her neck, kissed crazily and ******,
On the rhythms of the ogre’s waist gyrations, it was maximum pleasure to Victoria,
She reached her second ****** before the ogre; it took further one hour before releasing,
Victoria was beaten; she thought she was not in England in her father’s house
She thought she was in Timbuktu riding on a mosquito to Eldorado,
Where she could not be found by her father whatsoever,
The ogre pulled Victoria up, helped her to dress up,
She begged that they go back to the common room,
Lest her father finds them here, he would quarrel,
They went back to the common room,
Found her father talking to other two ogres,
She shouted to her father before anyone else,
That ‘father I have been showing him around our house,’
‘He has fallen in love with our house; he is passionate about it,’
Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya was shy,
He greeted the father and resumed his chair, with wryly dignity.


Song twelve
An impromptu festival took place,
Fully funded by the father of Victoria,
There was meat of all type from pork to chicken,
Greens were also there in plenty, pepper and watermelons,
Victoria’s mother remembered to prepare tripe of a goat
For the key visitant who was the suitor; Akhatembete,
Food was laid before the ogres to enjoy themselves,
As all others went to the other house for a brainstorming session,
But the hunched backed girl hid herself behind the door,
To admire the food which visitors were devouring,
As she also spied on the table manners of the visitors, for stories to be shared,
Perhaps between herself and her mother, when visitors are gone,
Some sub-human manners unfolded to her as she spied,
One of the ogres swallowed a spoon and a table fork,
And Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
Uncontrollably unstuffed his scarlet tail from the trouser,
The chill crawled up the spine of hunchbacked girl,
She almost shouted from her hideout, but she restrained herself,
She swore to herself to tell her father that the visitors are not humans
They are superhuman, Tarzans or mermaids or the werewolves,
The ogre who swallowed the spoon remorsefully tried to puke it back,
Lest the hosts discover the missing spoon and cause brouhaha,
It was difficult to puke out the spoon; it had already flowed into the stomach,
Victoria, her father, her mother and her friend Anastasia,
Anastasia; another English girl from the neighborhood,
Whom Victoria had fished, to work for her as a best maid, as a chaperon,
Went back to the house where the ogres had already finished eating,
They found ogres sitting idle squirming and flitting in their chairs
As if no food had ever been presented to them in a short while ago,
One ogre even shamelessly yawned, blinking his eyes like a snake,
They all forgot to say thanks for the food, no thanks for lunch,
But instead Akhatembete announced on behalf of other ogres,
That they should be allowed to go as they are late for something,
A behaviour so sub-human, given they were suitors to an English family,
Victoria’s father was uneasy, was irritated but he had no otherwise,
For he was desperate to have her daughter Victoria get married,
He had nothing to say but only to ask his daughter, Victoria,
If she was going right-away with her suitor or not,
To which she violently answered yes I am going with him,
Victoria’s mother kept mum, she only shot miserable glances
From one corner of the house to another, to the ogres also,
She totally said nothing, as Victoria was predictably violent
To any gainsayer in relation to her occasion of the moment,
Victoria’s father wished them all well in their life,
And permitted Victoria to go and have good life,
With Akhatembete, her suitor she had yearned for with equanimity,
Victoria was so confused with joy; her day of marriage is beholden,
She hurriedly packed up as if being chased by a monster,
Richard Riddle Jun 2015
It's an old, run-down, brick building-
with some pickup trucks, and a John Deere tractor-parked in front-
It has been there for many years-
with many memories in its 'font.

Why, that building knew your folks, children,
watched generations come thru the door-
It waved good-bye to new recruits
as they left to go to war.

It became a sort of, "meet and greet"
Where folks would come , take a seat-
the coffee urn, filled to the brim
for those waiting to get a trim.
(and for anyone else who wandered in)

And the stories! Oh Lord, the stories!
One would start with an anecdote-
another followed with a joke-
then another, each trying to top the other.

Folks would laugh so hard, you'd think they were die'n-
for there was no way to know
Who was telling a truth,
and who was lie'n-
(a determination that never could be made)

A great way to end the week!

The building had no signs, because everyone knew what it was,
so why spend the money to tell folks something they already knew.
Then, one day, this appeared on the door:

"Welcome Stranger! Come in and see!"
"The One and Only Barbershop"
"Where the BS flows like the River Nile, and the coffee's always free!"
(Open on Saturdays 7-3)
Closed Mon-Fri

copyright: richard riddle January 27, 2015

My father, for 20 years, was a game warden for the State of Texas. I  would often ride with him on weekends throughout his 6 county district, stopping at many of these small, rural, unincorporated communities. It was, as we say, "a real hoot!"
Connor Jul 2016
And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin
Written between late June to July 13th.
Richard Riddle Dec 2015
It's an old, run-down, brick building-
with some pickup trucks, and a John Deere tractor-parked in front-
It has been there for many years-
with many memories in its 'font.

Why, that building knew your folks, children,
watched generations come thru the door-
It waved good-bye to new recruits
as they left to go to war.

It became a sort of, "meet and greet"
Where folks would come , take a seat-
the coffee urn, filled to the brim
for those waiting to get a trim.
(and for anyone else who wandered in)

And the stories! Oh Lord, the stories!
One would start with an anecdote-
another followed with a joke-
then another, each trying to top the other.

Folks would laugh so hard, you'd think they were die'n-
for there was no way to know
Who was telling a truth,
and who was lie'n-
(a determination that never could be made)

A great way to end the week!

The building had no signs, because everyone knew what it was,
so why spend the money to tell folks something they already knew.
Then, one day, this appeared on the door:

"Welcome Stranger! Come in and see!"
"The One and Only Barbershop"
"Where the BS flows like the River Nile, and the coffee's always free!"
(Open on Saturdays 7-3)
Closed Mon-Fri

copyright: richard riddle January 27, 2015

My father, for 20 years, was a game warden for the State of Texas. I  would often ride with him on weekends throughout his 6 county district, stopping at many of these small, rural, unincorporated communities. It was, as we say, "a real hoot!"
Richard Riddle Dec 2016
(a repost for everyone who lives in rural areas)*


It's an old, run-down, brick building-
with some pickup trucks, and a John Deere tractor-parked in front-
It has been there for many years-
with many memories in its 'font.

Why, that building knew your folks, children,
watched generations come thru the door-
It waved good-bye to new recruits
as they left to go to war.

It became a sort of, "meet and greet"
Where folks would come , take a seat-
the coffee urn, filled to the brim
for those waiting to get a trim.
(and for anyone else who wandered in)

And the stories! Oh Lord, the stories!
One would start with an anecdote-
another followed with a joke-
then another, each trying to top the other.

Folks would laugh so hard, you'd think they were die'n-
for there was no way to know
Who was telling a truth,
and who was lie'n-
(a determination that never could be made)

A great way to end the week!

The building had no signs, because everyone knew what it was,
so why spend the money to tell folks something they already knew.
Then, one day, this appeared on the door:

"Welcome Stranger! Come in and see!"
"The One and Only Barbershop"
"Where the BS flows like the River Nile, and the coffee's always free!"
(Open on Saturdays 7-3)
Closed Mon-Fri

copyright: richard riddle January 27, 2015

My father, for 20 years, was a game warden for the State of Texas. I  would often ride with him on weekends throughout his 6 county district, stopping at many of these small, rural, unincorporated communities. It was, as we say, "a real hoot!" A photo of that old bldg. is on my banner.
Travis Green Dec 2018
Down at the barbershop where the
upbeat finesse fills the scene,
hypnotic basslines and smoking beats
rise from the radio into the
jazzy air.  

Various boys and men come
by to get close haircuts, fresh
fades, and dope designs.
Harmonic flows travel across
the shimmering space, bright
waves of excellent taste, a
thrilling serenity of light,
as the barbers create magic
in the brilliant place.  

Biggie’s lyrical anthem, Big Poppa,
blazes around the room,
hip-hopping jams full of
deep spins and breaking booms.

Groovy barbers rap to the beat,
spitting fire flaming diction
in glowing dimension, marching
in glorious rhythms, as the
whole masterpiece becomes
a supersonic sea of incessant
boogying and wavy arms,
snapping ankles and dancing
feet, an engine racing extravagance
moving in high flight.
Richard Riddle Jun 2016
a repost for everyone who lives in rural areas*


It's an old, run-down, brick building-
with some pickup trucks, and a John Deere tractor-parked in front-
It has been there for many years-
with many memories in its 'font.

Why, that building knew your folks, children,
watched generations come thru the door-
It waved good-bye to new recruits
as they left to go to war.

It became a sort of, "meet and greet"
Where folks would come , take a seat-
the coffee urn, filled to the brim
for those waiting to get a trim.
(and for anyone else who wandered in)

And the stories! Oh Lord, the stories!
One would start with an anecdote-
another followed with a joke-
then another, each trying to top the other.

Folks would laugh so hard, you'd think they were die'n-
for there was no way to know
Who was telling a truth,
and who was lie'n-
(a determination that never could be made)

A great way to end the week!

The building had no signs, because everyone knew what it was,
so why spend the money to tell folks something they already knew.
Then, one day, this appeared on the door:

"Welcome Stranger! Come in and see!"
"The One and Only Barbershop"
"Where the BS flows like the River Nile, and the coffee's always free!"
(Open on Saturdays 7-3)
Closed Mon-Fri

copyright: richard riddle January 27, 2015

My father, for 20 years, was a game warden for the State of Texas. I  would often ride with him on weekends throughout his 6 county district, stopping at many of these small, rural, unincorporated communities. It was, as we say, "a real hoot!"
JR Rhine Jun 2016
The soda can rumbles in the bowels,
tumbling into the gaping mouth
into which I enter a hand
to protrude my sugar rush.

sssni-kah, then the slurp of an obnoxiously pleasing sip.
I let the carbonation tickle my tongue,
reveling in the effervescent sensation.

The smell of old tires,
malodorous oil and gasoline,
and stale cigarettes fill the air.

My vexatious sips go unperturbing the dense atmosphere
that thickens outside the small air-conditioned office
and into the gas station,

where the mutters and sputters of drills,
kakadoo, kakadoo,
the squeaking and squawking of rotors and axles,
the interjections of swears and grunts
fill the air.

I peek through the ***** smudgy glass window in the door
to see grimy overalled ants meandering
under the body of our red mini-van
hiked up into the air like a figure skater,
suspended by the rusty clawed accompanist,
not a tremor of strain, unflinching,
letting the greasy men crawl underneath, hiking up her skirt
to examine her anatomy.

I walk outside and sit on a dusty tire stacked with others
on the side of the building--
some growing forlorn in tall grass
weaving in and out of the aperturous rim,
the fingers latching onto fissures and pulling it down
into the hungry earth.

Another slurp and I set the can down
to step onto my skateboard--
rolling across the gritty pavement,
snapping ollies and pop-shuv-its
to add my timbre to the cacophony
leaping out of the open garage doors.

I look over to the barbershop adjacent to the station--

The off-white single room squat allowing the cylindrical swirl
perpetually pirouetting atop the door-frame
to dazzle in a placid manner.

It is there I get my close trims
and pull a lollipop from the cavernous bowl
sitting atop the counter.

The barber, working silently behind his dull gray mustache
and dull gray eyes.

Outside the barbershop to the left,
Leicester Highway ambles onward,
diverging at a fork just ahead of the lot,
and the road adjacent that winds down my neighborhood,
Juno Drive.

I've never embarked down either divergent,
and I wonder which one is the less traveled.
(Frost, guide me.)

I go to the mailbox teetering on the edge of the highway
and hastily grab our mail,
the wind slapping at my *** as the cars whisk by
in their infinitesimal haste.

I feel like time slows once you step onto Juno Drive.

I turn around and saunter back to the station to see Billy,
my Working-Class Hero,
who I mostly see strolling up to the driver's side window
of our dull red mini-van
to loosely rest his arms crossed atop the window frame,
resting his sweaty forehead on his sticky hairy forearms.

Leaning in,

his blackened hands with his greasy smile
behind a scruffy scattered beard caked with dirt and grime,
atop a dark red leather face--
but eyes bright and merry.

His laugh, a phlegmy two-pack-a-day sputter
hacking and pummeling through the van,
all the way to me in the backseat peeking around mom's shoulders
to catch a look at this superhero anomaly.

And his southern drawl wrenching out of lungs
caked in tar and exhaust fumes,
that torpid slur that executes like the garbled hum
of an Oldsmobile engine chugging restlessly--

His laugh, an engine that won't turn over, sputtering to life
but falling right back down into the dirt,
lying on the oil-stained cold concrete floors ***** boots slipping over
and sticking too like wads of gum.

The charismatic mechanic who knew the answer to all things,
always ready to flash me that crooked greasy smile
stretching across his ruddy leather face.

I step back onto my skateboard, with soda in hand,
mail in the other,
and silently say goodbye to my Greasy Eden
before making my way down Juno Drive
towards the first house on the left,

following the road as it snakes past the trees,
alongside the creek, around the bend,
and out of sight.
Childhood memories.
we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing --
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss -- worse than ****;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
****** interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
******* it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and ****** a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd **** you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn't want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads -- all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay --
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don't want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go -- walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
******* your ******* little
ah ah   no no   maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.
Ottis Blades May 2013
It was the weirdest thing, for a lack of a better term. Some would find it hilarious, I found it confusing. But she used to bring me flowers whenever we got into a fight. At my home, work, the barbershop. You name it.

-“Ottis your girl is here...and she bought you flowers!”

I didn’t know if I liked it, or if I should be giggling like a teenage girl whenever she showed up with fresh-cut daisies or a bouquet of roses at my doorstep. I would hang up the phone on her on some serious mental rage and I would get flowers the next day- “I am sorry baby” she would say, -“I love you!” -Was I THAT sensitive? Did I brought out the mom in her? Have our roles been reversed? Doesn’t she know that all men are just content and happy with the two B's? (Beer and *******) or has the great battle for equality between men and women finally come to an end in the form of a dewy-eyed, raven-haired woman that found it romantic to bring her man flowers? It’s widely known that the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his *****, then his stomach. So, WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN? I would say to myself while gushing in pretend shock and saying to her “Aww, you shouldn’t have, they’re beautiful!”

She quickly became known among my friends as the Flower Girl. Her answer to all our problems where with flowers. She stands me up: flowers. She forgets to return my calls: flowers. She didn’t like my cooking: flowers. She disappears for a few days: flowers and more flowers. She used to carry my fragile woman-heart in her purse pocket. I unwillingly found myself wearing the skirt in the relationship before I knew it and it had to stop. I had to put my manly pants on, one leg at a time and stop letting them sag to her bidding. But they did smell nice though, and they were pretty, especially those yellowish-orange tulips she bought me that one time with that giant teddy bear with a giant heart-shaped card that read “Ottis” on it. That was nice.

-“Kara, listen to me, I don’t want anymore flowers, I’ve had it, they are nice and all, but I am the one that’s supposed to give you flowers!” -I said firmly and secure in the manliest tone I could mustard. -“But you never give me any” -she retorted with the sweetest, most adoring kind of voice that would make the softest of Care Bears look like ****-out gangsters. Needless to say I felt like a monster, like Charles Manson’s long lost child. I surrendered to her charm and became Silly Putty in her hands once more. But at least the flowers stopped after that day, so did the calls, the dates, the ***, her unparalleled lunacy, until we were nothing more than a memory in a pantheon of many. Last I heard, she went back to Switzerland, suffocating, bombarding and smothering the new poor schmuck she’s dating with, you guessed it, flowers.

Atlantic City, 2007.
Randy Johnson Feb 2016
You won't believe what I went through when I went to a black man's barbershop.
He was a racist **** and when I left, I called the cops.
He forcibly strapped me in his barber chair.
Then that punk shaved off all of my hair.
As I looked at my bald head in the mirror, he laughed at me.
He laughed and said that I deserved it because I'm a ******.
But he stopped laughing when the cops slapped on the cuffs.
He said that he didn't want to go to jail and I said "Tough!"
This is a fictional poem.
Sarina Apr 2013
It is occult, maybe, that we are twins
          but not of Gemini

how you know
which streets to turn left at
while I have the names and no context

how you still smell like cinnamon
although I never saw you
rub powder against your skin.

We are in the same city now
we have the same radio stations.

I see you the way I see the outline of
a boot when I can’t touch slumber
          not ethereal
    but almost reduced to such a shape

a barbershop’s swirling bulb
stretched and sunnier when no one has
entered in some time.  

           Everything is magic
in desperation, everything is similar.
A Mareship Sep 2013
(Not a home, I said.
An address.
The badges and the blossoms
Bragged ‘excess’.

Etched into every tree

The word:

S U C C E S S)

I am London
And he is me,
Not ever knowing which London to be,
A button eyed orphan,
A one man band,
A Dickensian madman
Whey-faced and untanned.

I was a Ruby Infant,
(Montpelier)
Via turreted school
(Machiavellian lair)
My conspiracy of ravens
The guardians of lore,
Falling in feathers
To a barbershop floor.

My mind is confetti -
From each Westminster wedding,
Each pill, each stumble,
A little be-heading.
I first kissed a girl in Trafalgar Square
And the memory of her is still there in the air,
In the backdrops of photographs snapped up by tourists,
In the lost eyes of pigeons,
(I know it, I’m sure of it -
because I know London
And he knows me -
We flow into each other
Like the Thames, to the sea).

Gobstopper ******* in Whitechapel lanes,
Knee-deep in the streets, leaving opal-ghost stains,
The bleeding graffiti of Mary Jane Kelly,
Our deaths, our murders,
So many, so many...

Bells,
Chiming,

Dark
Oubliettes,

Cradle me, London,
My bowed silhouette,
Settle me down
in your newspaper bed,
Love me,
Watch over me,
And when I am dead,
Make me a martyr,
Smooth out my head
Swallow me up in your gum studded streets,
Somewhere busy where I can feel millions of feet
Treading into me,
Over and
Over again,
And every so often, now and then,
Play out your bells for my syllables four,
Ding **** ding *****
Four and no more,
To remind yourself, London,
Of silly old me,
Who like you,
Never knew,
Which London to be.
um - unfinished and work in progress
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2013
True Stories #1

This is the first of what will be a series of little vignettes.


When I was fourteen,
I was the alienate hipster rebel
In a private school hellhole.

Hair long, tie knot never pushed up,
Unbuttoned button-down shirts,
Camus lover,
Siddhartha disciple,
Small acts of disdain,
Expressions of teenage hell-pain.

One day, the principal
Threw me out to get a haircut.
Went to the nearby barbershop,
Which was in the underground,
Subway stop.

Returned to school where It was
Pronounced unacceptable.
Twice more this charade-escapade,
Went on, till the barber cried and would not
Charge me anymore.

Shorn like a lamb,
My mother roared like a lion.

The next day, the man in charge,
Who would marry my second son,
Three decades later,
Called me in and sort-of-apologized.

From that day, I never respected authority,
Only learned to fear tyranny.

See photo of my latest protest!
Someday one of my descendants may stumble on this "poem."   I am storing these kernels of me, here.

Also explains the roots of this poem!

Nat Lipstadt · May 24
Growing Down: Used to tell 'em not to cut my hair too short

Used to tell 'em not to cut my hair too short,
When I was young-old,
Nowadays I just tell him cut it short,
so it
Spikes...Yikes!

Makes me realize,
Vanity is one of my
Oldest friends,
And also, one of my
Oldest enemies.

I like Bob Dylan's songs,
Like him better these days,
When younger voices cover him,
And I hear his word-songs differently.

Oh I love to laugh,
Especially at myself,
Silly boy in the mirror,
Who the heck are you Grandpa?
I am,
The Times They Are-A-Changin'
Nowadays, I'm  growing down
Lawrence Hall Apr 2018
For the CBC Anchormen’s Quintet

Take the keys (of C and G), call a cab
Take the ‘phone from the moaning baritone
Bury their sheet music beneath a slab
And chase from the bass the inverted cone

Hot coffee to purge demons a capella
With fervent prayers to our merciful Lord
Please save each and every harmonic fella
And free them from the ringing chord

Oh, call a priest, call a mom, call a cop
Because friends don’t let friends sing barbershop!
Allen Robinson Jul 2016
Stricken by doldrums
of everyday life
We gather to debate,
solve world problems
& talk general issues
A sanctuary of solitude
with rules that apply
like a Vegas excursion
The original men's social
club & escape of the
mundane to sharpen
ones style and enhance
ones appearance
Tears of joy and sadness
abound within the walls
History & current event
matters echo in the voices
of all who pass through.
Bruised Orange Mar 2015
"Can Poetry Matter?"
by
Stephen Dobyns

Heart feels the time has come to compose lyric poetry.
No more storytelling for him. Oh, Moon, Heart writes,
sad wafer of the heart's distress. and then: Oh, Moon,
bright ******* of the heart's pleasure. Which is it,
is the moon happy or sad, ******* or wafer? He looks
from the window but the night is overcast. Oh, Cloud,
he writes, moody veil of the Moon's distress. And then,
Oh, Cloud, sweet scarf of the Moon's repose. Once more
Heart asks, Are clouds kindly or a bother, is the moon sad
or at rest? He calls scientists who tell him that the moon
is a dead piece of rock. He calls astrologers. One says
the moon means water. Another that it signifies oblivion.
The girl next door says the Moon means love. The nut
up the block says it proves Satan has us under his thumb.
Heart goes back to his notebooks. Oh, Moon,, he writes,
confusing orb meaning one thing or another. Heart feels
that his words lack conviction. Then he hits on a solution.
Oh, Moon, immense hyena of introverted motorboat.
Oh, Moon, upside down lamppost of barbershop quartet.
Heart takes his lines to a critic who tells him that the poet
is recounting a time as a toddler when he saw his father
kissing the baby-sitter at the family's cottage on a lake.
Obviously, the poem explains the poet's fear of water.
Heart is ecstatic. He rushes home to continue writing.
Oh, Cloud, raccoon cadaver of colored crayon, angel spittle
recast as foggy euphoria. Heart is swept up by the passion
of composition. Freed from the responsibility of content,
no nuance of nonsense can be denied him. Soon his poems
appear everywhere, while the critic writes essays elucidating
Heart's meaning. Jointly they form a sausage factory of poetry:
Heart supplying the pig snouts and ****** tissue of language
which the critic encloses in a thin membrane of explication.
Lyric poetry means teamwork, thinks Heart: a hog farm,
corn field, and two old dobbins pulling a buckboard of song.

(from Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides, 1999)
I laughed hard at this.  Thought I'd share here. :-)
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
only days have past since the end of the most
depressing period in the year:
in terms of music...

i welcome January as that month where i can return
to music, to serious music...
if it weren't for some of the songs
i will cite: i would find even more allure
in the Adhan...

but thank god or the devil for the month
of carol singing is over!
the month of carol singing is over!
the "god" has been born - we'll see him
in 33 years to come -
and with his birth the carol singing
can finally be silenced...

why oh why do i find christmas such
a melancholic period?
the carol... even if nietzsche found
reading thomas a kempis' imitation
of christ to be a depressive lot in life...
i too have read it...
and thought of the joy i experienced
for week in Taizé (Burgundy)...

Burgundians in France...
the Kashubians in Poland -
or the Silesians...
how seemingly loveless it is to peer
at intra-national entities...
with a dear eye scout for the details...
the germans love to sing!
wasn't it an austrian that came along
with an opera in german when
all the operas where still in Italian?
to be honest...
it sounds much worse in England...
i favor Händel... greatly...

john suchet can have his Beethoven ****...
his 52 week long saturday 9pm
1h show dedicated to the deaf dunk'e...
i quiet like the backdrop of Händel's
life... the composition for the fireworks
on the Thames... Charles II in general...
point being:
the carol season is over...
i can return to what keeps me well met
with countering any hunger for
new music, even from the genres
i'd appreciate more...

there's no: last christmas - wham!
all i want for christmas - mariah carey...
fairytale of new york - the pogues...
merry christmas everyone - shaky stevens...
the usual suspects...

all that singing for a stone's worth
of a sad little heart...

give me the songs of anon.!
llibre vermell of montserrat - stella splendens!
cuncti simus!
carmina burana - bonum est confidere...
minnesang - neidhart - meine die liechter schin...
refenbogen - gott vater sparch zu abraham...
hugo von montfort - fro weit
konrad von würzburg - hofton...
wolkenstein - wer ist, die da durchleuchtet...
german 15th century anon. - ich var dohin...
ditto - mit vrouden quam der engel...
neidhart von reuental - sumer deiner suzzen wunne...

and the last can go on...
which i find an alternative to classical when...
when jazz becomes too congesting...
there is always an alternative...
and classical music doesn't have to be:
the ultimate counter to modern music...
even if jazz helps...
there is an alternative to what's being
pushed among former newsreaders
who have become "d.j."-'ey-'eys...

how naive of my to have the following thought:
if german was to somehow disappear
from the face of the earth by a lightning bolt
and become a lake of tears...

would i borrow anything from
the 20th century - the anglophonic victory
and subsequent gloating?
or perhaps just a songs from
the medieval period -

and even if the medieval period was
as glum and ignorant as modern rubrics
of science demand -
a scientific can't leverage a joy -
with such certainty of knowing -
with so much certainty -
with weather forecasts...
i demand myself to not watch the forecasts
and beckon my moods on the weather
and the weather on my moods...
if there's anything organic to be retained
with regards to weather -
if i were a farmer perhaps i'd listen
to the annual forecast...
but on a day-to-day basis?
why rob myself of this last desire for
a surprise?
why be robbed of the organic sensation
bound to air, to the electricity
tickling the skin when a thunderstorm...
then there's a deluge and the frogs start
speaking in a crescendo of their
curriculum of barrage and referendum:
and simply fall with
the cats and dogs and reprimand
the man who bodly goes into down...
a man who takes an umbrella with him
out of his residence...
and never will never buy an umbrella
on the whim... being surprised...
what joy when all you buy is predictable...
when all you buy is... an addiction focus...
to feel any better:
how can one feel any better buying
an umbrella spotaneously?!
what greater joy comes from buying
an umbrella when it unexpectedly starts
raining!
and what of the joy of running barefoot
in the rain! what of the joy still harvesting
our eyes our ears our nostrils!
has science really served up the right sort
of an anaesthetic?!
that we are incubated by pure mind...
pure reason and all the trivia crescendos
any mind will want to warrant further...
when not a single ounce of joy in song
can be captured?
intellectual complexity of song:
progressive rock and hyper-inflated pop...
classical music you will never be able
to whistle to... will never be able to take up
with a guitar and play the skeleton...

perhaps edvard grieg's:
in the hall of the mountain king...
but only perhaps!
play me the skeleton accent of any piece
of classical music! from 'ear alone:
this... but the rest? hardly a whisper,
a whimper a whistling pete the piper would
have minded in inducing hyponosis on
the rats...
that whriling crescendo...
the bombast pandemonium reaching
******... the cloud of bats and satans descend...

who cares if peter sutcliffe wants his ashes
to be scattered in yorkshire...
my bigger pet peeve was that he wanted
the cremantion to have....
saint-saëns - danse macabre
to be playing in the background...
yes... for all it's worth: the shrill violin...
the: scratching of nails on a blackboard...
the running of a fork or a knife
on a piece of ceramic plating...

also of note regarding today:
- vierschanzentournee -
outside of the english-speaking world...
there's much more than merely
an Eddie 'the eagle' edwards biopic...
come on!
a world darts championship?!
darts?! the pub go to thing if there's
no pool table?!
that's gonna be an olympic sport?
so what's so terrible about ski jumping?
or the biathlon?
or indoor volleyball for that matter?
the english and their cricket (ok...
i concede to the genius of the sport)...
but lawn bowls?!
what's wrong with... nip'n'tuc pin bowling?
curling... that's also a serious sport?!
tennis versus ping-pong...
which is like throwing darts...
and those demigods at the olympics
with the very recent south korean women
in that sport of archery!
darts and archery... savvy? Lu Bu... Jumong...
never mind... a fellow "countryman"
of "mine" might win this tournament this year...
a дaвид кубaЦки... why would i upper-case
the kappa or the delta...
when the letter of curiosity is the... Ц "ts" C?

- liverpool's second team with the help
of Gomez... Origi... Lallana managed to beat
the first team of Everton...
boys vs. men... 18 year olds etc.

- i finally perfected oven cooking
butterfly chicken *******...
temp. at rest? circa 165° farhenheit...
circa 30minutes at 200°C...
the roast tatties looking pretty and smiling
at me with that roastie brown...
etc. etc. - but the juice on those butterfly
*******?
who would have thought that
stuffing the ******* with the skin still intact...
in between the skin and the meat...
a healthy nugget of butter either side...
fresh thyme...
au provence sea-salt (rosemary,
thyme etc.)...
succulent enough to make you forget ever
wetting your appetite for
a chicken thigh... or a drumstick...

- and finally getting what i want...
the mirror vanity project of:
not needing a turkish barber to trim my beard...
finally! i'll admit...
whenever in a barber shop and sitting
in front of a mirror...
i always close my eyes
and let the barber do his work while
i relax...
perhaps the presence of two bodies
in focus on a canvas of mirror is...
well it's not exactly a third party detail...
the subjective experience is beyond
the necessity of being captivating...
i can't focus on my face since
i don't have any compliments for it...
and a barber working his way around
the excess hair that i should,
technically, tend to myself...
i never liked being pampered by
feminine men...
although: a barber can become...
and butcher the whole thing...
then again: feminine men?
the men who cook, are... feminine?
perhaps they're not engineers...
they are not metallurgists...
but... a **** good shave...
a **** good meal, cooked to perfection...
they're no more feminine than
the other definition: the men of aesthetics...

today i became a man of aesthetics with
regards to: how i want my beard trimmed...
i became the gardeners of my own
garden of chin neck and cheeks...
side-burns in tow...
and the evil 'tash...
slim on the sides...
and a bulging uvula of hair dangling from
the chin and its vicinity...
the evil 'tash trimmed so i can sip
some god's blood / ms. amber:
forget god's **** and all that's beer and cider...
fake it making to sit hunched until 1am...
push this over the "finish-line" and
say adios today!

perhaps i once "glorified" laying out a tier
of "help" of the 3Ps...
the priest, the psychiatrist, the *******...
of the last?
well... imagine wandering the labyrinth
of the english outer-suburbia for long
enough... fiddling with bricks
with the tips of your fingers until
either rust or diamonds spark of the scratching...
i would do ever so often...
stroke bricks, harshly...
go up to the oak and fiddle with its coarse
bark etchings...
a week would pass and i would
have my fingertips readied
to bring before me an example
of human flesh...
was it was tender as ******* an oyster?

i needed to revive a compensation
of sensation...

i once made myself visit the barber
after a long repose...
did i find the barbershop experience
more: rivetting... than any experience
bound to a brothel?

england: prostitution is legal!
but owning a brothel... isn't...
if in amsterdam i was given both the freedom
to seek the advice of a *******
and... smoke marijuana freely...
this paranoia-shadow of smoking it in england
would... simply fizzle out...
i wouldn't be some obnoxious ****
trying to get my rocks off with the "gateway drug"...

why did i smoke marijuana?
i simply "don't know"... but of course i do!
it gave me an escape from
being congested with parrot narratives
of the cartesian RES COGITANS...
i experienced...
the most unbelievable due of:
RES VANUS... the empty thing...
no more thinking than if i were dead...
tightrope spectacular...
it would seem that nothing bothered me...
there were no petty social rubrics to be cited
or be bungled into: the sire of sight
before me: and a bending crux knee...

but there came a time when
going to a barber was... so much more than
going to a brothel...
of course: you can't appreciate the one
without the other in making the statement that...
the latter overpowers the former...
nothing of my grew that would have
to be trimmed and tended to...
i wasn't magically circumcised in
a brothel via oral *** to allow me to
enjoy *** more...
and since i can't be circumcised:
this caduceus of protruding veins entwining...
and since ******* is...
at best the closest i come to satisfaction...
and all else is: pretending and...
ensuring the other party is satisfied...

no wonder i would allow myself to showcase
all the possibilities...
before having to retract and state...
petting a cat... getting a haircut and having
my beard trimmed...
but since i can trim my beard...
and if i need a haircut...
i'll be satisfied with the Auschwitz
syphilis crew-cut...
so be it...

barbershop... how can these men sit
and stare at themselves...
it's different when you're doing it solo...
but i rather see the vampire
and nothing before the mirror otherwise...
i would love to see myself: "myself"
on the canvas: 'fairest of them all'
in the snow-white fable mirror...
otherwise there's me looking more
like a ******* over-inflated
pupernickle... pumpernickle that uses yeast...
and this bloated ****-head's face...

but also this barber: this harlequin...
i wouldn't mind sitting before a mirror
in a barber shop... if i could also see
this barber-harlequin doing his aesthetic trimming
on an empty space...
so i tended to close my eyes...
while in the brothel my eyes were also open...
this whole: milan kundera debate
about those who **** with their eyes
open and those who **** with their eyes closed...

still... going to a barber was more
than getting a *******...
she... and i just imagined getting
indigestion from binging on gulping down
raw oysters...
and how many oysters would it take
for her **** to be turned into the taj mahal...

come to think of it...
what is best taken from this spew of words?
no rhyme, no meter...
well... there's that umbrella spontaneity...
isn't there?! that ought to be kept...
in spirit of the times when too much
is made predictable...
when predictabilty is certainly least
warranted...

will there be: the evil of my ways?
oh sure sure... walk into a brothel...
see the Nazgûl waiting in the ante-chamber...
and you ask one of them: which one of you?
and this other replies: that is against the rules...
you have to chose...
******* strapped on... then pulled back...
imitation ***** and: evidently
******* ******* is a bit like ****** *******
in movies...
and you do...
but in the back of your mind...
you have: Solomon and his prayer being answered...
his "wisdom"...
and of course the harem...
and then you have David...
prayer or no prayer... sure-as-**** no prayer
when it came to killing Goliath...
and... David's harem of psalms!

but i'm pretty sure that circumcision should
be... something requiring a man's
permission... baptism shma-anabaptism...
abracadabra-water trickle blah blah *******...
that i can survive...

there's still this 15th century german music to mind!
which goes outside of current,
appreciation of escapist music...
shawshank redemption: mozart...
or jazzy jazzy bleu ooh blue...
there's medieval folk...
there's old christian music that's outside of...
and in the measure of retaining:
the Cramp... the Krampfmuschi...
not this ******* coral singing...
no wonder i'm always depressed...
i'm always depressed when they start to coral...
what sort of achievement is merely being born?!
oh... right... when you have an a posteriori
light ahead of you...
when you don't commit suicide...
instead you decide: nothing more fitting
than a public spectacle...
i will not hang myself in "private"...
i will make sure that my psychological agony
of those around that have instigated it...
will need a spectacle!

carol singing out of my own ***...
he might have survived... i don't doubt it...
in all the icons...
the nails were nailed...
not at the wrists...
not in the tarsus talus region...
if they nailed him by the wrists?
and the tarsus talus (leg foot wrist circa)...
oh yeah! he'd be walking! third day!
but if you have a hole in your:
just above the metacarbal digits?
and how modern t.v. portrays crucifixion?
that... he wouldn't be hanging by nails alone...
that his arms would also be tied with
rope?!
what's next ******* spectacular was
to be awaited?!

whatever the clues:
i have a night to catch...
a night that's deserving of my sleep...
and tomorrow...
will be: tomorrow.
"The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division (Tavistock) specifications, and promoted in Britain by agencies which are controlled by British intelligence." Why Your Child Became A Drug Addict" Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Campaigner Special Report, Copyright 1978*

Don’t let it be said,
That nothing chipped off his father’s block,
The father who played
In ragtime and jazz bands,
In Liverpool, England.
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, and
According to “another clue for you all”
Compliments of Glass Onion:
“The Walrus was Paul.”
But I digress.
Sir Paul, erstwhile Beatle,
Certainly had the ear-for-music gene,
Percolating through his spiral double helix.
And the clever linguistics gene as well,
Lyrics seemingly crafted in an earlier era,
Back when fine-tuning & finesse,
Ruled bouts of social chitchat.
When men could sing when they spoke.
The music of the spoken word:
Homeric and magical,
Casting spells upon us.
Like English scops:
Medieval Minstrels, Jugglers & Clowns,
Who memorized and recited long heroic poems
And stories. Usually both.
The music of the spoken word;
The magic of an aural experience;
Back before those words conjured up oral experience,
“You are correct, Sir!” mouths Johnny’s sidekick,
Back before mouth-on *** crossed over to the Straight Population.
Back before Gordon Gekko/Liberace
Blamed his oral cancer on *******,
No. Not Colonel Angus.
Think Cole Porter--
Sophisticated, ***** lyrics,
Clever rhymes, complex misdemeanors.
Think Tin Pan Alley.
Cole Porter--a Yale graduate by the way,
Demonstrating another critically-important genetic fact of life:
The gift of Ivy-League DNA.
But, again, I digress.
Paul was the happy Beatle,
Not to be confused with John, the serious Beatle, or
George, the quiet Beatle.
Not to mention Ringo: the utterly extraneous Beatle.
Let’s map the social dynamics of their band.
Let us scrutinize that famous mop-top barbershop quartet.
Immediately we comprehend the creative tension,
Centered largely on that giant clash of personalities:
Paul vs. John.
The surprise is not that the Beatles broke up.
It’s more a sense of unsuspended disbelief,
That this particular band,
Ever got it together to show up for a gig,
Let alone last long enough to record their first album,
And go on to become the first
(Can we forget Elvis for a moment, please?)
Truly viral sensations of this earth, this realm, this England:
Pop stars of the Nineteen-Sixties.
John vs. Paul:
For every “Strawberry Fields Forever,”
There’s a “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid.”
A L Davies Jul 2011
curling red & white post outside a barbershop
entices me to enter for a shave.
i put the follicle-filled lather in a bag & express-post it
to a friend.
(she collects **** like that.)
i estimate the date of arrival to be
2 days 5 hours from current.
*(will it get there/in time for her to use in in that exhibit?)
sometimes i get high when i write poems.
luciana Oct 2021
Smoke lingers from every corner of the street
A sad man leans on the side of a closed barbershop
Rustic silver bars hold up the stumbling drunks
The man thinks to himself
"a sad sober man is just as pathetic as a careless drunken man"
Andrew Geary Nov 2014
Another building jumps
into the terrain, its lights charge
the hollering in the barbershop.
I remember how you hated
those who defended the sanctity
of this place, now you stand there
alongside the protesting.

‘The renewal is eating-up
the neighborhood,’ you say,
‘this is our home,’ but this is no home
for rising. Even when they level
the derelict charm of tenements,
there will always remain those who yell
at the progress of things. You stand firm,
believing in the value of this place
and this life, and you will teach
our child to value the comforts
of squalor. You see me behind a counter
to feed our son, but I won’t see him,
bitter, or worse, in love with this
hole. I’m leaving, but you will always stay–
Fear is your life.
M Murray Aug 2011
Walked into the barbershop

The barber had no shoes
Barton D Smock Jan 2013
a father and son argue outside a small town barbershop in windless ten degree weather.  inside the shop, which is closed, the barber’s wife is clipping away at a wig.  nearby, and quite by accident, an invisible man uncovers a fainting spell before which some will disrobe.  namely, women declaring that the eye is always naked.  who are these women?, ask my teeth, which are snow.
Iraira Cedillo Mar 2014
161 to 180 of 3251 Poets
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Margaret Kaufman

Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949
Deborah Warren

Marginalia
Regan Huff

Occurrence on Washburn Avenue
Anne Marie Macari

From the Plane
Gerald Fleming

There are no poems by this poet on our website.
Sebastian Matthews

Barbershop Quartet, East Village Grille
Charles Harper Webb

The Animals are Leaving
Zozan Hawez

Self-Portrait
Jose Angel Araguz

Gloves
Russell Libby (1956–2012)

Applied Geometry
Robert Haight

How Is It That the Snow
Early October Snow
Dan Lechay

Ghost Villanelle
James P. Lenfestey

Daughter
Robert Hedin (b. 1949)

The Old Liberators
My Mother's Hats
John Maloney

After Work
Kaelum Poulson

The Crow
Stuart Kestenbaum

Prayer for the Dead
Emmett Tenorio Melendez

My name came from . . .
Gary Dop

Father, Child, Water
On Swearing
Berwyn Moore

Driving to Camp Lend-A-Hand
«78910»
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Dec 2022
TO SHED MY TEARS

I'm sitting on the curb in late July between Al's
Barbershop and Harry's Hardware watching ants
making their way to the gutter where they disappear.
Busby, Nebraska is not a big town--in fact, it's not
even a small town--in fact, it's not even a town. It's
three blocks long, but Ethel's Cafe is open for break-
fast and lunch. And most importantly, it's on the
way to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation located
in the remote southwestern corner of South Dakota
where I'm headed on foot. I've been to Pine Ridge a
number of times. Something calls me there from time
to time. Not sure what it is--kind of like a spiritual
whisper. Only got 23 more miles to get there. I walk
wherever I go--reminds me of Wordsworth's THE
WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. I say I'm going
to Pine Ridge, but actually I'm headed to Wounded
Knee Cemetery, about ten miles east of Pine Ridge,
where so many of the Lakota Sioux men, women,
and children were slaughtered, then buried, the
last massacre of indigenous people by the U. S.
Army in 1890. I sit on the ground and cry and cry.
The dry grasses soak up my tears as fast as they
hit the ground.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Barton D Smock Jul 2012
people **** themselves all kinds of ways. round here being Millersport, Ohio. dark and stormy is how we talk about hair. the dead before they go. my mother’s hair was dark and stormy. wasn’t a monday; her boyfriend was upright and able to hold a pan. she took a couple to the back of the head but kept walking. went to this particular barbershop that’s still there, same barber, still cuts out the dark. passed people no street to be on so they were milled about and missed her darker and missed her stormy looking up as they were. something coming and it wasn’t my mom. all kinds of ways and my mom had to use a tornado. the upper half of her body was too much for the tree but it got its mouthful. her boyfriend held that pan for a week in the same hand.

as I am now turned out you might call me on the disconnect, heck, the dialect. you might want it to be horrible putting only half of her in that tree my own mother. truth might be, tree, my whole mother, and no tornado. I might take you at your word and tell you the tornado carries nothing but my home. that my mother locked herself in the cellar on the sunniest day of the year. that I knew beforehand what the year would bring weather wise. that she lived through all the following malevolence behind those would say to her son she ain’t all there. that when she came out of the cellar it was because of a bird she’d claimed to have heard in her belly.

— The End —