"blandness" poems
I hate myself
and my blandness.
I hate my hair
and my sadness.
I hate my nose
and my bruteness.
I hate my feet
and my bitterness.
I hate my legs
and my desperateness.
I hate my wrists
and my selfconsciousness.
Perfection
Beauty
Happy
Brilliance
Selfless
Excitement
Nothing.
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 2:39 PM UTC
i am gloriously indulgent
when left to my own devices
lashings of stylish fulfillment
in a mix of virtues and vices
i have my sense of order
though i am craven to desire
drunk with a sense of beauty
to torch blandness in a fire
poor dear mediocrity
your time is not with me
you are my sworn enemy
find others for company
i burn for what is art
and those, who do it for love
they are my choice of company
together, we'll rise above
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 3:01 AM UTC
I want you to destroy me
because I know you'd enjoy it.
Rip me to shreds because that's what
I'll be if it means you loving me back together again.
And again.
And again.
What we've got is so horrible,
so painful, so honest, such a raw,
destructive, quality to what we call
"us" that it would almost be masochistic to go back.
Our brand of senselessness,
so alluring, and irresistibly passionate.
I cannot fathom the blandness of sanity.
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 4:12 AM UTC
Father checks if I'm sleeping; I wake up, and see
little tinctures of nothing night-sky poetic, I see
blandness slathered in a huge speck. Where was
that spirit and excitement and everything that life offered
not too long ago? Who wakes up to do their homework
at midnight?
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
I've got the January blues,
The Monday heaviness,
A kind of Tuesday Sadness.
I've got the Wednesday empties,
The Thursday lonelies,
And a Friday full of Madness.
Saturdays are cold and grey
While Sundays seem to slip away,
And the week recycles into blandness.
Jan 13, 2022
Jan 13, 2022 at 4:30 PM UTC
First period is always the worst.
After hours of perfect, statuesque silence
I am poked, prodded, abused
Why is he always so angry
So hateful
His fingers claw at me
His feet collide into my legs
And sometimes,
He loses his temper all together
And in a furious rage
He hurtles me against the wall
As if destroying a mere chair
Will solve all problems
Finally he leaves as second period begins
And I am filled with blandness
A person trying to blend
Never lifting a finger or muttering a word
It suffocates me with its nothingness
I force myself to get lost in time
But it always seems like eternity
It's not at all like when she sits in me
Sixth hour is always the best
She comes in with a soft step
Quietly settling herself in
She seems solemn most days
As if filled with disappointment
I wish I could embrace her
Let her know she is loved
But I can't
No chair can
It's a shame,
Next year, she'll be gone
And all be left with pokes, prods, and unhappiness.
I am just a chair after all.
Aug 16, 2013
Aug 16, 2013 at 1:34 AM UTC
herbs new mown send green scent to me
an undertone of pepper - non-explosive -
marks this spot especially
a creole mixture to spice the morning walk
were I the chef of this walk
blandness would prevail
for blanding is safe
and requires no inspiration
I am learning recklessness and wantonness
it is in my eyes, should you peer into them
it is in my heart, should you sound it
it is in my being now and you can smell it on me
like the peppery scent in that spot there
I am become a creole recipe
delicious and warm
fulfilling and comfort to the traveler
in this landscape
Roberta Compton Rainwater
c. 2009/2014
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 10:40 AM UTC
Fingers and thumbs tapping out messages
so many texts written, so many read, smiles apart
faces, eyes, feelings, never shared
music videos; lips and music separate
empty sounds, never tugging the heart strings.
Thumbs and fingers keying in distance
so much data, so little experience shared, time apart
laptops, smart phones, processing emptiness
unfeeling, sampling blandness, subtleties lost
empty words, crowding our lives.
Curves, flowing lines and spaces, passion
compressed
squashed out are the senses
sweat and smells, laughter lost.
All in the empty kingdom of bits and bytes
reigned by the gods of technology
the mantra being faster, faster
but still
all fingers and thumbs in the affairs of the heart.
As surely as we are propelled forward
into tomorrow
we hurtle
back to the dark ages
the dark castles of aloneness
Empty words, lost in the cells of our separation
all fingers and thumbs.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 5:25 AM UTC
my tears
remind me
I am real
my emotions
have frostbite
exposed to
such coldness
they shut off
so I feel nothing at all
then misery comes around
and warms them up
just enough
so I can
feel
the true pain I am in
how critical my state is
it's ironic
how major depression
can make me
oblivious
to how depressed
I really am
like floating inside
a storm cloud
living in gray
experiencing
nothing
but blandness
until I fall
just a small amount
and realize
I'm inside
a torrential downpour
big enough
to sink Noah and his ark
big enough
to swallow this planet whole
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 7:18 AM UTC
The noontime breeze blows through my face
Refreshing my memory of things I left behind.
The summer sun scorches my dry skin.
As I endlessly yawn and give in.
I gaze at the clear, blue sky
Humming the soothing tune of boredom.
I let out a long sigh,
To release the worry and rejection.
I can taste the blandness of the afternoon
And all the bitter aftertastes.
The tingling sound of the glistening chimes above my head,
Remind me of the lazy days lying on my bed.
Oct 4, 2013
Oct 4, 2013 at 8:37 AM UTC
All my herbs have lost their taste,
and all my spices are now sand.
My rosemary is still fresh.
I've always hated rosemary,
it tastes like garbage.
So the question is... do I put it on my meal?
Is it better to have a blandness in my food,
leaving me unsatisfied?
Or put on the grossly distinguishable flavor of rosemary,
to add variety, for the sake of difference?
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 11:40 PM UTC
Am I supposed to want
To do more than just take it all in, how does everyone
Hold so fast onto the silk when it’s been
Sedated to such a slippery strand?
My grip tends to snap the thread extended by the
Way they talk to me, maybe if they gave me a rope.
As it is I prefer to
Synthesize the scenery into puffs of ***** smoke-
These desserts are grated from reality and so I
Must love reality, but I can’t eat it raw;
I see people’s sawdust centers as the
Cream they could become, I am far more deterred
By bitter tastes than the concept of having to wait for my predictions to ripen,
The fact that they never will is
Only a cynical estimation of mine that I hope will spoil as I age.
Spices are not lies, are not
Blandness masquerading as something so inconsistent with your vision that
You will lose sight of the road.
It is not just a question of
Going down easier, it’s just better
To boil your potatoes.
I hope to dispel a fear of my own, that
I’m some sort of addict, filling myself up with helium like some sort of
Basement-life pocket knife fix,
A recipe mixed to skew me into groggy selfishness that
I would anticipate as good faith and optimism, but my tendencies are erratic,
Dragging my body along to trace a healthy heart line, I suppose,
and with one foot in the door,
I can't quite say which side I'd rather be on.
Feb 21, 2014
Feb 21, 2014 at 6:38 PM UTC
The ocean isn't really beautiful.
Even Bukowski said so.
Stop treating things like they need to be
happy gooey and awesome.
In fact,
the happy gooey--or crunchy if it is preferable-- awesome,
isn't real because it
oozes alacrity
and therefore adds some sort of undeniable blandness,
like the way they add unfavorable GMOs in food,
to reality
that makes happy gooey awesome all the more not
perfect.
The sun isn't always magnificent is it?
There will be bad days,
where
people are strange
and do strange things
that you will not understand
and you will do strange things
where people will never understand
or when **** just starts to fall apart
like life lacks forward momentum
and nihilism runs rampant in your lungs.
But it's not always night is it?
And then there will be normal days
when this place seems to let you breathe for awhile,
inhaling and exhaling
filing up those voids of the "bad days"
and the "good days",
allowing you to enjoy the small pleasures of this
world.
Allowing you to fit
and conform
into boundaries of your own
self-made contentment,
ultimately restricting you
into your self-made hole
with you and your conquered beliefs over the years
from good situations or bad situations
or situations in between.
But
and don't mind me for taking that long to reach
a small point
the entire universe isn't that small is it?
Mar 8, 2012
Mar 8, 2012 at 9:46 PM UTC
I have had ideas, many times;
I have had anger at all the world
And its plates and cups and knives and forks
And pots and pans.
I have used coffee scrub, up
To my elbows
And sugar scrub on my face.
I have stood over rose beds
With my legs far apart
And bled colour to the world below,
Trailing my hell along behind me.
I have had bitter blandness
Blanch the back
Of my throat and the roof of my mouth
Until all that was left was bleach.
I have held glass bottles to the sky
Waiting for thunderstorms.
I have whispered my love to the palm of your hand,
Then watched it drain out through the cracks into sand.
But still I will eat
All my meals out of teacups/
I will let my blemished body be/
I will smell every flower
Growing along the side of a drain/
I will gargle before bed
With pinecone and cherry grain/
I will watch
Outside my window for hail/
I will whisper other things to you
Until the end
Of time
Or tomorrow --
Whichever comes first
-- and hope that inspiration strikes.
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 5:43 AM UTC
Lift above. Lift carefully.
What is under may come undone
if your hands are unsteady.
Sure to become gone wisps, a pungent spoor
for whipping your head around
but never a surprise when it returns
in a subway conversation with your friend
all drunkenness and perception
before coming home to die on your bed
throwing up hell from inside you
acid and convulsions
remembering what animal you are
that something can subside and something else
can emerge
thoughtless
truer than your certainty.
For isn’t true now
the clammy skin you’ve questioned?
True now the ribs of your throat
writhing like Amazon leaves?
Truer still
your biology abstract? You?
Animal living by nature?
Which means not without you, means just
relinquishing
everything to what is
before having become or going to be.
Such as the time of day
the sky knows it’s dying.
Fountains an orange-red frondescence
that won’t last at all, half-hour at most,
yet which, in that pale existence,
manages as if to turn itself inside-out
as if younger, as if expressing repressed
ecstasy
in the being unknown
before upheaval—the saturation
of openness by color becoming
a moment in blandness worthwhile.
A pause to hear
your legs dangling over nothing.
And a phoenix sky, falling
this very Sunday
when not doing much
became so much
and now
somebody’s lit the sky again, the dusk
feeling a blooming
washing the streets and rooftops
in a new canary dawning
new light also darkening
but only as if only
a veil spun of bird wings
is lifting above
and carefully over
what is dying.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
9th February.
I suppose it should hold special meaning,
Or coloured dinosaur eggs
But it's merely volcano silt.
Washing out a year and bringing in a brand new blandness I don't need.
It'll be the celebration day of my birth in just a week
Everyone has forgotten,
Too wrapped up in their own brain mazes;
Everyone forgets,
Mauve poison daggers seeping through memories
Forgetting;
Mostly warm summer days,
Mostly the southerly change at night
Mostly February ninth.
Everyone's forgotten me.
Feb 2, 2014
Feb 2, 2014 at 8:09 AM UTC
These four walls are closing in,
quickly becoming my only friend.
I want so badly to call them foe,
but they’re the only sanctuary that I know.
Outside these walls I am free,
to writhe in such eloquent agony.
These four walls leave something to be desired,
their meticulous blandness has left me quite tired.
Emotional or physical, which pain is worse?
I suffer both in this place to which I am cursed.
Do I have a choice and which would I choose?
Rational thinking has completely lost its use.
It seems I am forced so suffer both blows
amidst these walls where all time slows.
These four walls have crushed me whole,
they seem to demand my once pure soul.
Encased in pain, my heart has fallen hard,
I suffer in silence, playing my cheerful card.
I have foolish notions of what I could be,
if all these searing wounds didn’t plague me.
I don’t want to be sad, don’t mean to sound bleak,
but I’ve rarely felt a time when I wasn’t weak.
Out of these four walls I will move on,
though the memories will never be gone.
I’ll pick up the pieces and continue down this path,
I wish I could say that I knew I wouldn't be back.
Back between these four walls where I’m forced to heal
from the treacherous fate that my DNA has sealed.
Feb 21, 2012
Feb 21, 2012 at 8:51 AM UTC
The Highs taste like Lemon Heads
Before burning my mouth like Cinnamon Red Hots.
The Lows go down like soup of ash and cold water.
I am forever trying to find a balance between the flavors of mania
And the blandness of depression.
Often, I find myself hungry in the wee hours,
Dismayed by both options.
Feb 13, 2022
Feb 13, 2022 at 6:41 PM UTC
a perfect canvas can get away with anything,
even destruction.
nothing done to it will destroy it, only make it shine.
add this, and add that.
pile on all the things that made everybody else undesirable.
instead of revolting, you become art.
was it a transformation of the hands or one of the eyes?
it’s like you had become adorned with colour and shine
instead of a veil to hide your reality.
the blandness beneath,
or the stark truth behind you.
mayhap it was a transformation of the heart.
it seems as though one may have bartered their life
just to be worthy of a glimpse
for five more minutes.
perhaps not merely a glimpse,
more, a lifetime.
what is it about
Mar 20, 2024
Mar 20, 2024 at 2:47 AM UTC
And I laughed…
Nobody laughed back
I was laughing alone
There were eyes on me
I could feel a lot of eyes on me
Feeling me up
Lingering on parts of me
Some parts more than the others
The eyes soon got bored
Lost interest in me and my parts
They switched their attention
back to the customary dullness
However, every time a new pair of eyes set sight on me,
it lingered for a while
But they soon joined the rest
Eyes, many eyes, lots of 'em
I saw them looking
I sensed them looking
They wanted reason
They wanted a story
They wanted to see more than a happy face
It would cheer them up
Helped flush the blandness in?
They dug it out of my laughing face
while I was still alive
I didn’t have a reason now
But they didn’t care
They made it up
Each pair saw a different story
Some were similar, others distinct
Some saw varying proportions
of tragedy and insanity,
while others saw total madness
Some shared their imagination
while others kept it to themselves
Eyes, I wondered,
were funny little organs
They compelled the mighty brain
to think about what they saw,
every time they saw,
and they never stopped seeing.
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 10:34 AM UTC
I never asked for this
But when does anybody get what he asks for
or knows what he wants
or what he is chosen for
I only see people
behaving like circus monkeys
not even trained tigers have that look
a tiger is a tiger till death
be careful
It is only your life at stake
too much tolerance breeds blandness
dust under the rug
chatter and gossip
vomited on the radio, the news
injecting fear and chocolate blood
without any risk
spreading only a rotten stench
as if joy meant showing your colgate smile
just like a giant billboard telling you to let go
of the fight
not to resist and become like Mikey Mouse
with four fingers and the grin of death
****** got more style
I’d rather listen to an angry *****
than any anchor woman
or any senator
than any businessman
or lecturer, teacher, parent
I’d rather be depressed
or with a pain in my stomach
like the one I felt when a
frustrated love
told me...
"never change"
when I expected something else
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 12:39 AM UTC
White walls surrounding
Crushing creativity without a sound
No one to push for diversity
In an environment where we're bound to be plain
Blandness depriving
Minds from thriving
Albino cells designed to keep one sane
Clearly violence is induced by paint
Maybe its designed to keep minds numb
To deny the opportunity of realizing what one can become
Instead creating the illusion your best isn't enough
Mirroring the image of our predicted fate to come
A classroom a prison all in its own
Making it inevitable to settle into this world we were thrown
Into, some of us as soon as we were even born
Prejudging. Assuming
Before they even know our name
Relating crimes of poverty to an innocent face
Because That's the Way We Were Raised
Sentenced to fail
By the Judgement of society that says
We won't be anything because we were born into nothing
Somebody should should share the fact it's a choice to become something
Looking down on us, barely masking their disdain
The pity they feel marking their face like a stain
I will be something
Breaking free from the shackles that were latched on my feet
When the system started controlling how educators teach
Controlling my mind
Refusing to be a puppet of my circumstances
A dummy without views
Politely tell the system when you see them
I went above all their rules
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 12:47 PM UTC
On my bed, giving life to the latest poem
And suddenly a soft sound scratches my ears.
Again, again, again, constant:
One, two, three and there it is again –
Frustration flicking my bedroom window,
Staining that sparkly pane with its insane irritation.
The pain sounds again.
A delightful butterfly struggles to contemplate
The gap between the glasses of my prison wall.
Beautiful; fluttering frantically; fragile.
My intentions are purer than the billion colours
That elegantly engulf those deceptive eyes.
I delicately, ever so delicately urge
That curious creature back to nature’s beauty,
Urge it away from the blandness of the bedroom,
But humanity has never, will never be so forgiving.
My little push is the destruction of such beauty:
Maimed for freedom, slaughtered for escape,
A victim of war, humanity’s war.
I feel guilt but more so regret,
That, although that poor creature
Suffered such an untimely demise,
He had achieved a life worth living:
A butterfly who freely fluttered
The bedrooms of the world,
And escaped the irony of being
More humane than man could ever dream.
I envy that poor, superior creature,
For I am just a butterfly breaker.
I am just an animal.
Feb 14, 2011
Feb 14, 2011 at 12:32 PM UTC