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nick armbrister Jan 2018
boeing 747-700x
they say that size doesn't matter
but i disagree with them
and say they're full of ****
size DOES matter
this is why i fly my jet
a boeing 747-700x
my baby is f8cking huge
a touch under 280ft long
i can carry hundreds of people
all around the world
flying in luxury in my jet
served by **** air hostesses
with bruce dickenson my co-pilot
take it from me size does matter
and yes my jet is big and black
unbuilt jet
The 787 Dreamliners
tickets sold but not going
Would you really get aboard
a plane whose name is "Boing"?

Because of counterfeit parts
There are no Dreamliner flights
There is also a new rumour
That the crew is scared of heights

There are only a few airports
Where the Dreamliner resides
The rest have too short runways
Though they all are extra wide

I am sure that in the future
They will resolve the growing pains
And that the Boeing 787
Will fly high above the "planes"
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
in that, beyond good and evil, there's on femininity and masculinity; we already know of st. thomas' account about how the masculine needs to made into feminine and vice verse... no wonder such teachings in the undercurrent of our life, that we went beyond this and started doing likewise in the framework of good and evil; but there's hardly a dualism within the four 90º, while the tetragrammaton opens the gates to geometric phoneticism, which does not work in the hebrew depiction of the tetragrammaton, only in latin, because in latin one will not see a vision but reveal, having heard but not seen, and when inserting a thought into an experience: a satanism that said: i'll be satan and change this choir into moving stars and send a telegram to the aliens! should i see man loose all dignity in warring with himself that ended in napoleonic trust for man and man on the battlefield - because what she offered most men can get, and what i was offered only one among the billions, and in history about three, get.

so while some attempts at a sensual proof were not
granted, only one was, through moses,
and obviously through elijah - as sensual proofs
go, the proof of moses had to be fused with
a cognitive remainder, since, given the fact
that the torah was written by the supreme outsider,
the book depicting elijah was written by a true insider,
yet the cognitive realm which these two operated in
is a pure mystery, given the fact that sensually,
the staged rifts were short lived, yet too long lived
cognitively, having to argue, cite and disagree with
moses, who dragged the most sensual distortion
into the cognitive realm.

so as cognitive proof-arguments go, they are simply that,
more cognitive proofs lead to more argumentation,
but little sensuality, such that the paid need for
theological argumentation that leads to no sensual
precipitation enters the realm of holocausts,
whereby idle and vain cognitive proofs have no sensual
******, only more "thinking;" paid thinking.
and when the sensual proof for the non-existence of god
appears, like the holocaust, all those accumulative
"proofs" from the cognitive realm... end up like midgets...
and everyone's awe taken aback, because so much
cognition was left undisturbed, that the senses are prompted
for a disaster! why would i want cognitive argumentation
if i cannot seek and find a sensual guarantee?
where's the sensual ******, if cognitive argumentation
climaxed to the fine tuned 1 + 1 logic is a sensual anticlimax?!

the odd thing is walking the neighbourhood with beer and hand
waiting for the indian heatwave, but as i sooner realised,
this type of drinking is no good - the shelter of the garden
is where i find laughter - on the street making miles
i find anger - and as i noticed a day prior:
beer in hand, cigarette burning the lung forests,
watching a clear night sky, seeing a boeing boast
engine ***** high up to sound like i drone - that
universe forgets i can claim a nighttime hemisphere of sounds
with that boeing, even though the daytime skyblue is blinded
by a dilated pupil,i can feed that massive vacuum
of emptiness and keyhole glitter a mishap and a chance
to study less celestial geometry to endeavour out of this
haven.

prompts a maxim this verse does:
no one around me in my shape or walk -
tall enough to reach the sky, but
dumb like a thirteen day old butterfly, still flirting with the flutter.
***** you were born as the caterpillar old man,
now you're a fever of beauty in colour,
and only for two weeks, or even less if nabokov is about.

well, crescendo!
when simon magus stood with st. peter at nero's throne
the stage was like the two women with solomon about to cut a baby in half.
it was scened within the following framework of details:
st. peter started to sing bon jovi's 'lay your hands on me,'
with alternative lyrics - let me lay my hands on you
with the power of the holy spirit.
nero replied: lay your own hand on yourself, get away from
me you ***** *******, that holy spirit of yours, the one
you said is a personality but really isn't is just another form of:
celestial chaining; magus simon, what about you?
so simon magus came up and said:
i'll whiff you a smokey vision of caligula learning
of philosophy as read by his talking horse *incitatus
.

i wish for praise here on originality, but i heard of this one,
the talking horse of caligula by the one and only zbyszek herbert,
and in quick translation the poem reads -

*says caligula:

from all the citizens of rome
i loved only one
incitasus - a horse

when he entered the senate
the unblemished toga of his fur
glistened immaculately among hemmed with purple cowardly
                                                        ­                           murderers.

incitatus was full of virtuous bounties
he never spoke over me or spoke in general
a stoic nature
i think that at night in the stables he read philosophers

i loved him to such an extent that one day i decided to
                                                              ­                   crucify him
but his noble anatomy countered such a feat

he bosomed the position of consul with dignified apathy
he held power to the helm with a cupful of water
spilling none in a drunk waiter's swagger,
meaning he used none of it with the entitlement

it was impossible to make him bow to long lasting bonds of love
with mt second wife caesonia
alas no lineage of future caesars arose - centaurs

that's why rome crumbled

i decided to nominate him a god
but on the ninth day before the calendar days of february
cherea cornelius sabinus and other fools obstructed these godly intentions

with calm he received the message of my death

thrown out from the palace and sentenced to exile

he accepted the burden with dignity

he died heirless
butchered by a thick-skinned butcher from the township of anzio

of the posthumous fates of his meat
taticus is silent with regards to.
Toxic yeti Mar 2019
As I see a
Boeing jet
Take off
Form the airport
So fat and so happy
I can feel
The freedom
It’s gaining.
How I wish it was me.  

As I see a Boeing jet
Land
At the airport
Still fat and still happy
I feel like a captive
For it is not free
Due to weather and gravity.
Aqua, bright fresh water
we oft get in the Malaysian Airlines
but not in the MH 370
where art Thou?

where are you all now?
when people and media around the world
bow in your case somehow

still hope you are all alive
i knew that you made that one big dive
right to the bottom of the ocean

all those inspectors are still saying
we can hear your phones are still ringing
my heart, my body and soul
knew: you all are not whole
anymore, but you were just freezing in the cool
do not make me a fool

that big birdie right to the bottom
with that rapid speed
as if to a large concrete

MH 370 you are now in freezing coolest water
know, that we all still bother

between air-intro space
or salted water filled ground
with the deepest bound

no matter what, we still care about you all
what only matters how long have you been suffering
in that suffocating small space between those walls

we all heard you sing

whatever Thy Response, i do understand Thee
no matter what, it's Thy divine decision

oh Lord, that suffocating air on the bottom of the Indian Ocean
how they were suffocated altogether suffered
and that only 2500 km away from Perth

but i trust Thee Lord, Thou hath Thy own reason
whatever may be Thy divine decision and Thy precision

may all passengers be altogether in greatest peace and ease
may they all really be released and now Rest In Peace....




© Sylvia Frances Chan

AD.Saturday 22nd March 2014~~at 3.09 hrs a.m.~~
ADDED Notes:
Since 11th March  this MH 370 has disappeared from the radar navigation~~since then I had watched each hour of every day TV journals~~~till today they have found the wreck~~~the chinese in Beijing announced the news today~~
CORRECTED on Monday AD. 24th March 2014 21.12 hrs. pm~~  Malaysia too has announced this news, that they have found the wreck TODAY 24th March at 2500 km away from PERTH, West-Australia at the bottom of the Indian Ocean~~~~~~~~
3.09 hrs a.m.Since 14th March this MH 370 has disappeared from the radar navigation~Monday AD. 24th March 2014 21.12 hrs. pm~~  Malaysia too has announced this news, that they have found the wreck TODAY 24th March at 2500 km away from PERTH, West-Australia at the bottom of the Indian Ocean~~~~~~~~~
softcomponent Sep 2014
it's night now
and events have stopped.

Stillness evades the froth of evening
calm leather moves none under the fabric.

This home -- older than our world -- flushed
with wisdom -- flushed with glee -- flushed
with the violent storm of transience and
correction -- eyesight jiggled and adjusted
for new intentions -- meaning frisked for
rocks on a Boeing --

it's night now
and events have stopped.

you have stopped.

I have stopped.
Blown glass heartbeat,

With an extension cord, the vibrations are distancing themselves,

Between macabre and *** luck and **** luck- And affection-

Are heirlooms cry of antique tears.

San Francisco Chronicle:

“Boeing kidnaps…”

And my soul bottled up in an hour layover heist.

Boeing adult-naps.

Texas.

Texas.

Texas.

Amarillo beehive hair across the aisle, smoke and honey.

It stings my tongue, kisses my lungs, legs-crossed on the highest rung.

The Miller High Life-esque, reclining on a quarter moon.

Here we are, patience and mercy.

Here we are patience.

Here we are.

Here.
Lawrence Hall Dec 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Romance of the Boeing 707

                                     Out on Runway Number 9
                                     Big 707 set to go

                                           -Gordon Lightfoot

Old Ginsberg wrote that the typewriter was holy
An airport of words for coming and going
On a runway of ribbon, platen, and keys
McKuen might have said it’s a safe place to land

But then came the Boeing 707
Dear Gordon Lightfoot’s silver wings on high
It flew our words and us all over the world
And became for us holy in its own way

The 707 – there was nothing finer
But the last one I saw was a roadside diner
The Romance of the Boeing 707
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
.i'm in luck, they're selling it at under 11 quid right now,
stock dry - gone in an instant - laphroaig like -
but not as smoky - but smoked scotch it it
at £10.34 - oh the little joys of having little money to spend -
you end up less picky and less hoarder and
the junk yard.


na głowe sypano mi, tak popiół:
     popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
           popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
                 popiół! a obiecano mi *****!

                  (not my words... lao che's dym)...

me, beer, cigarette, outer-suburbia -
police whizz past, silent with flare
or screaming toddler and Odysseus' 20 sirens
with wax in the ears of oaring company
akin to Ajax'ς vitality -
along the way, my neighbour (who's mother
killed my cat.. listen, i know he had
heart problems, he was on aspirin -
but kidneys, even if complicated are not
real problem, felines take longer to ****
than do the no. 2, pigeons don't have kidneys -
they're always of an **** diet of diarrhoea;
write like Aristotle sometimes,
forget the facts, be wrong, get it wrong,
never put a glass cup into the waterfall of
poetic cascades - get it wrong, be wrong -
get to know yourself - it's not that dumb
to be predictable in yourself -
if you allow self-predictability you will
see certain social events as being pointless -
you'll see friends and "friends" -
self-predictability is a verb, compounded -
i already know i'll make references to grammar
and it being missing in philosophy -
no, not coherence and appropriate arrangement -
i mean undoing the box of thing-in-itself
and the subsequent tennis with a brick wall,
to surprise yourself when something is unearthed,
a little piece of the puzzle - simulating awe,
the genesis of all that's to come, even awe from a yawn
and boredom... it's here somewhere... i'll karate
catch it with chop sticks.... (looking around)...
i don't know, might be a moth or a fly...

Antichrist: or a summary of Antisemitism - a variant of,
or at least a concentration - mainly confiscated
by Christianity - prime complaint:
a democracy of Anointed One (Messiahs) -
obviously a manifested justifiable practice of Antisemitism -
the throng of Golgotha intelligence quotient -
Jew v. Jew, and one convert from the delusional
4 x 4 (in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy
                                         spirit... hold on!
                                    i make four gestures... and make a fifth
                 with Romeo and Juliet talking -
St. Matthew-Luke-Mark-and-John... penta penta pent-up
pentagon - evidently there's a pentagrammaton somewhere:
ah! i b l i s.                       Surat no. via Rumi - 7:143 - veils and
the one - reward in heaven - more veils, gardens veils,
grapes in heaven veils - stomach a veil - hunger a veil -
rewards in heaven also veils - the poem?
praise be Jesus - and Jason and the Argonauts - and whoever
wanted a strawberry flavoured pastiche to lick tears off -
love's apocalypse, love's glory -
         well bloodhound eyes say it all - droop drool -
droop & drool... Jack & Jill... went up the hill, and passed
the Grimm Bro. baton to Hanzel und Gretyl in the 100m x4
relay of Disney Limps - then rabbinical literature to sober up -
Albotini's Sulam HaAliyah (Ladder of Ascent, formerly Jacob's
ladder - to be: Ladder of Skip-rope; Oxford, hello! yes,
can you please consider un-hyphenating what is desirably
a compound worthy word in the practice of German?          )?
is a bracket necessary anywhere and i missed it?
Antichrist - or a very strange form of antisemitism -
be like a Jew, congregate applauding in the right corner: Jesus -
in the blue corner: Crux Golgothia.
export from Portugal - the said book -
key principle (kefitzah) jumping or skipping (dilug) -
and this being applied to the one practice of mystic Judaism -
the ****** gematria; hishtavut (stoicism) -

me - is it still 20 quid for an eighth?
Sim (my neighbour) - yeah, but these days
                                       they sort of cheat,
                                       you'd get an eighth nibbled on,
                                       twenty for a tenth?!
me - ******, well, we can't expect it to not happen,
         we had coin debasement - clippings of silver
         keratin with Siliqua, third stage and
         all encoded authority is gone: Thomas and Anne
         till death and nail clippings be fraud unison in
         the depart (or when narration extinguishes
         a character, the character is worth nothing -
         the narrator wakes up - all the characters run
         like phantom-hares into nonexistence -
         phantom! thin air!
politeness said: only one **** at the wacky wee ö wee
(umlaut O / double oh, 007 - 00'7 - double u... oh!
                                 i get it!                             Jamie Oliver!)
DEI.GRA.REG.FID.DEF.
   "   (-tia) (-ina)(-ei)(-ensor) -
all that would have been clipped - authority of visage -
the courtesan only knew the mint in silver
and the mint in the flesh - hence clipping of coin
to erase the authority from the holy authority of words -
in the beginning - but once dei.gra.reg.fid.def.jpeg /
                                   dei.gra.red.fid.def.gif.

that ****** moth is here somewhere! there it is! catch it!
                                                             ­   catch it!
SLAM!          and the job is done )                                      ).
i really waiting a bus stop pretending to wait for a bus
toking on a joint - joint is mix tobacco and wee wee
and spliff is pure? i forgot the slang - haven't been
addicted to it in years.
Sim - yeah, that's how it is. work in central london -
         have to get up early in the morning.
         corporate finance - no that's a commercial firm,
         corporate finance - McDonald's, etc.
me - oh cool waiting for  ghost bus - never get paranoid
         then?
(police cars whizz by)
Sim - n'ah, a perfectly decent area, got stopped once,
          three years ago.
and the price goes to the laziest narrator in history - absolutely
no engagement with characters - it's too real, everyone's
lying - this is the second time i spoke to my neighbour properly
in the past.. ooh 2002... 14 YEARS - it's not even funny -
no amount of marijuana will make you feel comfortable -
you can mate and make Kingston handshakes and what not -
this is purity of absurdity and western isolation,
we went against the maxim: no man is an island on purpose,
not by chance like Robinson Crusoe -
at least Crusoe had a talking Friday - we have a ghost
of Michael Faraday on Friday - ******* disco blink blink -
poet... or alt.: the narrator complex - inhibitions toward
character craft and pseudo-schizoid symptom -
believing in ghosts is easy, fiction writers and their ghosts
and abortions, hardly a way to escape from that -
poetry: rebellious narration - just anything with narration,
modern fiction is read like a chess match between deep blue
and Kasparov - or Pavlov v. Jezebel playing gynaecologist.

blank.... blank... wait for the atoms trilled R to make
their toady presence felt -
the more pricier the whiskey the more pristine water,
i.e. you get drunk more easily -
anyone that smokes marijuana and thinks
they're clever are stupid; how many people are out there that are
stupid!
- resounding hearsay-hooray!
drugs, ******, crack, blow, marijuana, ****, ***,
  cannabis, dope, ******, mary-jane, 13, M - herb shake -
Humphrey saying to Bogart - that joint.
as said in Saudi
Arabic - a Ferrari G.T.I. and MeKubalim HaMitbodedim
                  )
                                  -chism - schism - sky - ski -
                                  cha cha, cha cha - kilo or 100th -
                                  1000 thd. - hundredth a thousandth -
                                  - where then the acute,
                                  timber from Czechs -
                                  kebab from Mesopotamia -
                                  and the Trojan horse to boot -
                                 chatter - chopper whopper -
                                 astoikism - not chew off
                                 curve into cherish but
                                 cravat chew in -
                                 Slavic mining zed - czarna
                                 ciasność - blackened claustrophobia.
a Buddhist clap
                   immersion -
left handed the right hand claps against air
                  )             )              )               )            ) ) )            )
a night at the Opera, right handed the left hand claps against air
(                       (        (            (               (          ( ( (            (
scimitar Luna - so they said, would like an audience with the
further unmentioned mention -
you're mates with neighbours who over 14 years you only
spoke to the count of thumb and index on occasion -
and thus necessarily high -
i was going to write something really important before
i finalised this draft... but i forgot what it was...
got almighty this whiskey is good...
i'm smoking salmon and pickling reindeer hooves and antennas;
a bit like practising Chinese miracle medicine with
whale blubber and Mongolian nostril hairs.

it's not about loving your enemies -
this love sinister must be invoked as: making your
enemies bearable.

i'm sure i had something concerning poetry and narration -
ah! it was... poetic compensation -
a.d.h.d. narration - attention deficit hyperactive disorder -
true - all psychiatric terms are metaphors -
at least outside the psychiatric realm -
poetry as a.d.h.d. meaning: shrapnel narration -
a custard pie of missing characters -
poetry: i.e.: the inability to believe in ghosts
or write characters - claustrophobic or agoraphobic narration?
a mix of both - poetry - the inability to conjure
Ouija fancies - poetry, the over-specialised gift for
narration, but an inability to invent characters -
poetry, the truth of the narrative, and the truth of un-invented
characters, poetry: the ability to narrate, coupled
with the inability to create characters -
fiction and the dumb narrator - poetry and the exquisite
narrator - fiction and the exciting characters -
poetry and the God - our focus is based on that vector,
or bias to that vector - fiction and the Oscars -
narrator and director - when to change from first person
to third person - again Burroughs was right -
images 50 years ahead of writing - a bit obvious,
nothing spectacular with that phrase -
lightning and the sons of thunder: 12 of them -
made the tetragrammaton less spoken and swear words
fucken-uppen censored so the crucifix and **** could
collide - a fine fine excuse - the Boeing 747 first
and later the quasi-sonic broom shoo' 'mm -
poetry as fiction disguised when fiction was given
a seance with pure narratives - splinter group:
philosophy's juggling with pronouns esp. the plural deviation
from first person as if to proper punctuation -
psychiatry and the theory of pronoun usage -
poetry and the pronoun rōnin (macron = umlaut -
count to two, or prolong - reasonable man / **** sapiens, pre-noun pro-adjective / adjective attache-noun, noun counter-noun es duo-adjective, Kellogg's sunrise cockle-doodle-dip-in-tartan-chess) -
only poetry mediates the parallel vectors of prose-fiction and philosophy - it consolidates the use of pronouns, art of poetry alone -
pure narration we're talking about,
the narrator and characters of its fancy,
philosopher and dialectical placebos (character equivalence)
with self-conscious moments, mono-pro-noun - alone i name -
the sacred squash wall of lecturing an invisible audience -
rummaging epitaphs in a graveyard along with birth dates
and live by dates - yes, that sacred we philosophers use -
an entire theatre was summoned to continue in appearing
sensible when writing without fictive apparitions -
enabling a fluidity in pronoun use, without sensible letter
writing, as in dear sir,
                                       me in reverse, thank you.
w
Fern Woodward Nov 2012
A pale yellow butterfly weaves in-between the legs of Plai-Jum Pui.
In the middle of the Thai jungle the hard sun beating down,
it tempts this angelic beast with its life.
Trusting in an elephant not to step on you,
Rocking back and forth on the bones of his back.
I guess I've done the same.

A Boeing jet, double decker.
Five hundred and twenty five people balancing on its wings.
The turbulence cradles us back to sleep,
finding motherly comfort in the foreign flight attendants reassuring words.
Having faith in aluminum sheets,
we all drift back to sleep.

A knock on the door and a call from the neighbor,
complaints of boundaries being resisted and property abused.
Fences acting as a seam to a fiery feud.
Guardian of their own selfish wills.
The worst war is fought from within,
a fight with your own kin.

A naive creature is spared its life,
confiding in the unsure and unreliable.
lacking trust for each other,
and burdening these winged seraphs and mothers.
The assumed minor species rely on one another,
having no need for metal protection and a religious buffer.
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Bruce Adams Sep 2023
A text for five voices.

Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.

i. Blank copy

I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                    or glide past
                                                the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
                                                dit-dit-dit­-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
                                  as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
                sit there
                for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
                                                Print
  ­                                              I press
                                                        Cop­y
                                                        instead­.
The machine whirs
The light goes
                        across
And out comes this copy this
        Copy of
                nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
                                                This is a copy
                                                                ­of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
                                                             ­   something more
                                                            ­    something
                                                   ­                                imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
                                Carefully
                    ­                            on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
                                                         ­                           I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
                     Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
              I’m looking out of the window as I recall
              without much interest
              that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
                            Until the window is as blank as my copy of
                                                              ­                                           nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
              sit
                     down
                                   yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
                                                        ­Oh shut up I tell it
                                                        out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
                     and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
                     scrawled over in heavy black print
                     and ****** coloured columns
                                                                ­      and smelling
                                                        ­              Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
                                          (or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
       to me
              like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
       I ***** up
                     and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
              What difference could it possibly make
              whether I throw this piece of paper
                                                 which I will now have to print again
              in the black part of the bin for waste
              or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          Yeah.
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
              Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
Then out loud:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
                            a hypermarket
                            a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
       And I will go on holiday
       I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
       And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
                                                         ­      or a couple of hundred
                                                         ­      pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
                                   I don’t know
                                                 “Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
       Down with planes.
                                   And I’ll drive my car home and I will
                                   stop
                                   worrying
                                   about
                                   everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
                            now I have difficulty
                            telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
                     in rapid succession
                                          dit dit dit
                                                        rapid­ eye movement
                                                        ­radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
                                   but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
                                                         ­             I make notes on it.
                                                             ­         My copy of nothing.
                                                        ­              Without really realising
                                                       ­               I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
              disappear
                                int­o the paper
and it is clean again.



ii. Ringing sea

My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
                     having ***
                                          with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
                     Which belongs to me.
                                          It’s my face. I – own it.
                                                        It’s my- my- my-
                                                        And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
                                   His face
                                   His face
                                   His face       It’s him
                                                        It’s him
                                                        It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
                            a face I know intimately
                                                      ­         and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
                                                              ­        what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
                                                         ­      Dit / dit.
                                                            ­   Dit \ dit.
                                                            ­   Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
                                                          ­                   to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
                            and apply it
                                                 carefully
                                                       ­          sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
                                I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
                                without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
                                                        (onl­y mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
                                          I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
                                          the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
                                   a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
                     There are some flowers tied to a railing
                     somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
                                                        It­’s the not knowing.
                                                        ­The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
                                                        ­But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
                                                        No­w I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
                     beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
                                                 out of
                                                            my­ shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
                     howling now
                                          catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
                                          whether my husband will call me or
                                          text me when he lands
and I hurl
       my phone
              into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
                            is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
                                   not the geography
                                          not the conflicts
                                                 not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
                                                               invasion and,
                                                                ­             subsequently,
                                                                ­                                  explosion.
                    ­               We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
                                   between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
                                          and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
                            with brilliant, burning clarity
                                                        m­y phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
                                   I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
       I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
       is as wet
              as my bottom half
                            because the rain
                                          is torrential
                                                      ­  and I can still hear the phone ringing
                                                        b­ut I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
       his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
       and I can’t tell if I’m
              further out
              or if the tide’s further in
                            and the ringing grows louder
                            as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
                                                             ­         the stars rush by overhead.



iii. Acid rain

Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
       Purple
       or green
       I think.
                     One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
                                                            ­   or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
                                   going downhill at 100 miles an hour
                                   the wind blasting through me
                                   the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
                                   everything is turning together
                                   but I’m on a different
                                                       ­                 axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
       Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
       several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
                                                 I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
                                          it feels a bit surreal
                                                         ­      but the world stops spinning
                                                        ­       a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
                            I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
                            but I can’t find the right one
                            even though the fridge must be longer than
                            the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
       the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
       red tops and blue spreads
       and green and purple and green and purple
              and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
                            Missing
                      ­      presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
              (cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
                     so
                         until then
                     they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
       One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
       I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
       which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
                                                 filtered onto the trains and buses
                                                 and out from the sprawling car parks
                                                 to the motorway, and
                                                 onto connecting flights back into Europe
              but none of them will stay in Luton
                                                           ­                  Missing
                                                         ­                    presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
                                                           ­                         which is a *******
                                                 moves with the mundanity of machinery
                                                 like the big car factories by the airport
                                                 the lights on, the production lines rolling
                                                 but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
                                                          ­     excitedly
                                                       ­                      or dejectedly
                                                      ­         but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
                            dead and alive in the air;
                            one or the other on the ground.
                                                         ­      My teachers say I have an
                                                              ­ “odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
                            I look at the departure boards.
                            Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
                            A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
                                                           ­                  green and purple
                                                          ­                   green and purple
                                                          ­                                 Missing
                                                         ­                                  presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
       so they keep darting
                            this way and that
                                                 until my vision is painted over
                                                            ­                 green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
       This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
                                          but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
                            with charge
                                          across the green and purple grass
                                          scorched by a hundred thousand landings
                                          a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
                     glinting in the rain
                     surrounded by blinking amber
       there is my bike
       its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
                                                 pedalling down the runway
                                                 pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
       the acid rain eats away at my clothes
       and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
                     Lighter
                            and lighter until…
                                                 The wheels lift away from the ground
                                                          ­     and in the air I am dead and alive
                                                 and maybe nobody will
                                                                ­                           ever
                                                            ­                               see me
                                                                ­                           again.



iv. Burning sky

The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
                                                            ­                 What?
                     We’re not going very fast at all
                     But it feels like any minute
                                                 we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
                                          and I feel aware of being
                                          light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
       feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
       since we left Victoria but the fight
       we had there
                            in a bistro by the port we
       said things we
       said things that
                            we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
                                   the people kept talking about pirates.
                                   They kept warning us about pirates.
                                   You’re sailing where
                                                        the­y say
                                   You must be careful
                                                        t­hey say
                                   It’s notorious
                                                       ­ they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
       Real pirates.
                     Nasty pirates.
                     With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
                          I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
                          If we’d make national news.
                          Would it be David Cameron to announce,
                                                       ­        regrettably,
                                                    ­           we don’t negotiate with pirates,
                          or would it be someone less important?
                          Maybe just the foreign secretary.
                          What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
       disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
              oh
                                   I
                                                 Sorry
I’m crying.
                     I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
              everything
literally falls to pieces
                            My mug of coffee falls from my hand
                            shatters on the deck
                                                            ­and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
                            No, really.
                            That’s not a metaphor.
                                                       ­        There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
       There.
              ****.
                            **** **** ****.
What is that?
                                   Marc!
I call for Marc.
                                   Marc!
       There is fire in the sky.

–              Katherine.

       Fire in the sky.
       Fire in the
       Fire in

–              Katherine.

       Fire

–              Katherine.

       What
              Marc, what?

–              Are you awake?

       I think so.

–              You were calling out again.

       Calling

–              Calling out. You were shouting.

       What
       where
       What time is it?
                                   Where

–              Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
                They delayed again while you were sleeping.

       Dubai?

–              Katy I really think you should see a doctor.

       Don’t call me that.

–              Pardon?

       Katy.
       Don’t call me that.
                                          Like

–          ­                                       Like what?

       Everything’s okay.



       Everything’s not okay.

–               There’s
                 doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
                 well actually since before it even happened.

       You think I’ve been confused.

–              Not right.
                Not you.

       You’re **** right.

–              Forget it.

       Thank you.

–              Go back to sleep. ****.



–              Are you still seeing it?
                The plane? On fire.
                                   You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?

       Yes.

–              It’s affecting you?

       I’m
              just
                     unhappy,
       Marc.

–              That’s not just it though is it?

       What’s that supposed to mean?

–              Something about seeing that
                                                           ­   plane has scared you.

       We don’t know it was the plane.
       The one that –

–                            No. But, right place, right time.
              They said

       Maybe.

–              It’s still a coincidence.
                It’s not

                                   What

–                                   A sign.
                                     From god.
                                     Or
                                          whatever.

     ­                                     Whatever you think it means.



                            Katherine.

       The thing I don’t know, Marc
       is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
       or that it wasn’t.



       Imagine.
       Vanishing.
       Into thin air.

–              I know.

                            No, you don’t.
       Disappearing
                            into thin air
       Or falling
                            out of it.

–              Falling.

       You can’t imagine that.

–              I can.



–              I can, Katy.
                I ******* can
                                          Imagine.
       ­         Falling.
                Disappearing.
             ­   Into thin air.

                *******
                            i­nvisible.

                 I am
                           right
                          ­          ******* here,
                                                        K­atherine.

       I see you.
       I see you Marc.
       But you’re not
                            solid.

       I’m not
                            solid.
                          ­                              See?

                           ­                             It passes
                                                          ­     right through.

       Now you see me.
                                   Now yo–



v. 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
                                                        ­       I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
              and I’ve been asleep all day.
                                   I get dressed and grab my camera
                                   and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
       The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
              his daughter is four now
              he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
              and he’s moving, he says,
                                                 near me apparently
                                                 to Southend.
                                                       ­               “London Southend” he jokes
                                                                ­      with a roll of his eye
                                                             ­         and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
       the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
       strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
                                                      ­                but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
       They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
              I wonder what is lost between the
              Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
              and the English spoken by the translator.
                                                     ­          The space between words.
                                                          ­     The space between looking left
                                                            ­                               and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
       except for the British delegates
       including the man from Reuters who speculates
       that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
              I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
                                                            ­          as it falls
              and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
                                          the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
                                          and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                   or glide past
                                                        the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
                            dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
                            as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
                            from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
       I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
                            double,
                 ­           cut with water.
              not because I like it but
              because there’s something about scotch that feels
                                                           ­                         moneyed
              heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
              it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
              even though that’s a lie.
                                                        I’m just a man who takes pictures.
                                                       ­ And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
                                                          ­                   as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
                                          A news alert on my phone says a piece of
                                          plane wreckage
                                          washed up
                                                        on Réunion
                                                        i­n the Indian Ocean,
                                   east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
                                                            ­                 it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
                                          I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
                     endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
                                                 and I imagine
                                                         ­             swimming
                                           ­      in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
                                          maternal
       ­                                   spiritual
                    ­                      nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
                                                               ­              slept
                                                           ­           then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
                                                        don’­t tell anyone.
What
       I say
and she says
              I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
       just in case
                            she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
                                   no-one is looking at her
                                   but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
                                                         ­      yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
                                                 I see the photo I took this evening about
                                                 a dozen times
                                                 or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
                                   What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
                                                        and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
                            It was going from here to Beijing.
                            Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
                     that
                     time
                     precisely
                                   my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
                                                    ­    It looks like I’m going to Beijing.
Written 2016-2020.
Starry Sep 2019
As the boeing's engines
Start
To fail
A
Gaint purple butterfly swaps in
To save
The plane
It's passengers
And its crew
From certain
Destruction
Jared Eli Aug 2013
I was born on a leap year
Right before the Millenium
A family of five in Mexico were stabbed
Six days before I arrived
And in the same month
(But half the days)
That Rusty won the first NASCAR race
In Japan

Call me a Scorpio, I don't mind
I was born in the year of the rat
And the zodiac says that fire's my element
But I always liked my time spent in water

Pearl is to the ancients
What Topaz is today
Though neither value much
To the people on the Boeing 747
Or the Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane
That killed 349 people
With the force of their collision

When you look up the day
That I came to be known
As another member of the living
They'll tell you all about the fatal, terrible crash
That I was too young to remember or even witness

Being born in the '90's earns me
No extra respect
No reverent awe
No special treatment
I was born too late for the long-haired peace
Disco and drugs
A John Hughes-like high school
And only my parents got away with
Sweat pants and leg warmers
Or turtleneck sweaters

I am just another 96 baby
But they don't make them like us
Anymore
nic Sep 2012
on the last night
of the june breeze
that i spent tucked
between your hips
and my home
i heard
almost as faint
as a wing flutter
your tongue unfurled
the sounds of your streets
against my ear.

pavement hard but
sweet as a plum liquor

spelled out avenues that
have become rose pastures.
hoods that have
grown thick in themselves
with petals stained
of red rich violence
cross brown bones
but those bullets
bear no color.

taxi swift
yet city street thick

buzzing the sounds
of a place with half
the people
yet twice the traffic.
the kind of
tuesday twelve fifteen traffic
that i never understood
but you made action
where you lost sense.
dropped clips into the alleys
where the cops
wouldn't go
and pierced a limb
or two on the way.

cheeks filled with
with sticky bliss
bashed the demure
of downtown
cause the magnificent mile
ain't got ish
to the brick backbones
of them cook county temples
tourist tend to
trip past.

on my last night
here with you
i want to do
nothing more than wash
the windy city out of me
before state lines
baptize my view
of your anatomy.
pipe my gums
with this Crest
and brush your
taste out of me.

see big cities
have stained my tongue before.
new york is still in there
and i ain't even been there
in years.

i've caught tears
streamlining down
the crest of my cheek
at the taste
of chips of bay ridge
in my teeth.

so why don't
you just get lost?

the lingering lisp of your
shoreline sure does
last a tad
past welcomed.
matter of fact,
a tad past passed
two ticks before
your beach sands
sank my hips.
your lips have learned
too well
the outline of
my spine poured
against your banks boy.

so no thanks boy.
i don't want your tee shirt.
i don't need your silhouette
sketched in my memory
let alone my key chain.

and you keep saying
i'll be back
but i'll believe that
when i'm 30,000 ft up
straddling your boarder
by boeing.
ln Jul 2014
Boeing 777
MH17
17/7/14.

“ Most of the passengers had no race,
But today they gained a nationality.
Today, we are united in grieve. “

Tragedy struck again,
One strike after another,
One blow after another.

Today, we lost 295 people,
Out of a grand total of 7.046 billion people.

To an individual,
The figures may mean nothing,
Comparatively.

But as a nation,
This was a hard one to accept.

How do you digest the fact that
295 people lost their future,
Overnight.

How do you digest the fact that
295 people are gone just like that.

How do you accept the fact that
Your country is falling apart,
Slowly,
But surely.
Jeremy Betts Oct 2019
{Political}

I can almost guarantee the powers that be own a most coveted secret
A key to our mortality, a complete rid of social duality, a newly constructed exit on the set of this twisted skit
Can you imagine it? That'd be one heck of an achievement, almost a magic trick, especially for this government
But a magician never tells! They keep it so far under wraps you can't even peep it like some area 51 type sht
Like buried treasure at the bottom of a filled sand pit, no map, no opportunity to find it
You're not even allowed to know about it's existence much less that the stories of it are legit
It's right there, in the small print on the bottom of every voter pamphlet
I don't know if that part is true but I wouldn't put it past them or doubt it for a minute
They never speak it out loud, never leak it nor tweet it #youdontknowshitaboutsh
t
You feed on your feed, the algorithm arithmetic, all the mind numbing bull sht
You forget the outrage over something like Charlotte too quick, makes me physicaly sick
I'll point out that it's largely due to strategic fluff stories from the puppet at you're local news outlet
The same bigot that's probably got an audio booklet cassette on deck
Explaining in detail how to be completely wrong and still politically correct
I get more credible info on current events from the cashiers down at the corner market
The talking box force feeds you this toxic banquet, I've seen it prepared so I'd steer clear of the brisket
They flood the market to keep you off target, to stop you from forming any kind of argument
To stop you from asking yourself if they are the solution to the problem or a part of it
Truth and lies on both sides inviting me to sit but I run the gauntlet
A tactical gambit, there is no quit like a bad habit, I've kicked the social media vise, you haven't
Fear is a typical sidekick but that's what got us in this predicament, permanently visibly upset
Messing up the placement of priorities, becoming complacent with corrupt authorities and it's evident
We offer up our thoughts and prayers then get distracted by an ice bucket?
Subconsciously saying f
ck it I guess as they hurd you off topic with the rest of the simple minded public

Here's a challenge to get behind, why don't you try to expand your mind?
"But I have guy, I'm color blind" a preprogrammed "progressive" response strategically timed
But you'll find that those mindless sayings quickly become the shackles that bind
And cause a divide by the combined efforts of trying to confuse and misguide
And trying to cover up the line they should have never crossed but you can't be kind and rewind
Any and all opposing views or educated ideas get disregarded like a watermelon rine
You look at this dysfunctional timeline and say it's fine? Are you out of your dang mind?
This problem defines the word problem but our county lying in a chalk outline is too real of a news headline
Fear is again what's driving mankind as credibility starts a fast decline, like a Boeing Max airline
It's more like a drop off, a Saturday morning cartoon kind with a cliff edge right before the finish line
Stuck in first gear as we redline through the confines of what they try and say is benign
Can't enjoy the ride while blind cause that's when you'll get blindsided, now paralysed with a broken spine
I saw the sign but you're oblivious every time, tweeting comfortablely from table nine
Soaking in a brine of lying swine, greedy bovine, salt from the grape vine but no thoughts you can claim as "mine"
It's a sad history we say we've left behind but we're still riding it with the thrill of a first Valentine
We redesign the facade after every indecent like Columbine and think that'll do fine but that thought in its self is asinine

An empty statement with good intention deserves no attention, not even a mention
But that's what is given over and over again and some don't even see we're headin' in the wrong direction
Directly to gettin' skull ******, takin' ***** to the chin and we've given permission
Here, just for you, let me paint my vision, my interpretation of every villain within those white walls of sin
Yup, that's right, turns out it's modeled after the famous painting of the last din-din
That's to say it's a portrait of every Democrat and Republican, from now to back then
Back from the moment this little experiment began, way back when
They welcome your frustration hoping that by the end you'll abandon your mission of self preservation
By throwing in the towel with the sink from the kitchen
Yoda esq sage advice can't be given if, for one, no one seems to listen and two it's all gone missin'
Ahhhh, that's cute, your all insistin' you had a hand in each and every decision
But you're just siftin' through fake news, wishin' for break throughs, this isn't livin', this is survival and the lines thin
And hand on the bible I can't promise or pretend we'll win cause once we get that tail spin a goin' it's out of our control again
Got you btchin' about it the entire time but never taking action
A worthless, regurgitated post now brings a job well done type of satisfaction
So while the world burns around you you're convinced you've done your part and mastered the equation
You've gone and put your 100th phrase in, time to sit back relaxin', waitin' for your empty praise to come in
Self worth and entitlement bought for a bargain, actually, you glide in and take it when no one is lookin'
It doesn't belong to you but of course you deserve it more than him, am I right? Sure I am
A moral compass no longer a good life's linchpin, good and evil lookin' like twins in the same discount bin
But when you start conversatin' about how bad you've got it, I hear the worlds smallest violin start playin'

THIS SH
T IS NOT GOING AWAY ON ITS OWN FOLKS
As our world coughs and chokes and everyone pokes and breaks the rotten yolks
Sitting in a rancid environment, we take tragedy and twist it into jokes
Then back peddle saying everyone copes differently with the hopes that the real you stays out of public scopes
It's crazy that facts seem to be what provokes outrage from one side as the other side claims it's a hoax
An abundance of fake news cloaks the real issues and gets us to turn on our kinfolks
We see them toss the stick into our bike spokes but still believe when they say "it was definitely those other blokes"
How is it we know it's smoke and mirrors but everyone still takes it in with deep tokes
What we witness everyday should be what invokes change but we can't change anything with empty keystokes
It's good to stand for something but now we need to move forward before we're clear cut like old growth oaks
And it won't just be one side or the other that croaks, no, this divide stokes our collective demise as our head bloats
It somehow strokes our ego as we think we traverse the high road but can't steer, flying with no yokes
We pray that we can at least stay above water but nothing so poorly put together floats
Take notes cause if history repeats itself we're on a crash course with diminishing hopes
Which will leave only a shell of what we use to be as a country, nothing inside like empty envelopes

©2019
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
Swirl devil wind,
reek dusty havoc.
A mustang watches.

Silly hermit crab,
try on a new home,
a Budlight can.

Longacres racetrack,
ghost horses called to post
by Boeing trumpets.

I would decoupage
our love.
Life for art's sake.

My hanging fucshia
attracts a humming bird.
The nectar's on me.
In some of these haiku I do not adhere to the strict 5,7,5 syllables, as this restriction is intended only for Japanese onji.  Wherever possible Enlish haiku should be shorter.
Lawrence Hall Oct 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                   Beowulf and the Danish Passport Officer

                     From a recently discovered manuscript

The clapped-out Boeing         wheezed to the gate
The ground crew jumped                 name-tags rattling
And swiftly moored                 the shining ocean-bird

Behind his plastic shield                 a Danish official watched
The travelers approach         their passports raised
He stood peeking down         at the naughty selfie
His girlfriend sent         to his bold smart-phone
Shaking his rubber stamp                 he spoke:

“What is                 the purpose of your visit?
Business, or pleasure?                 Hwaet! I’ve stood
At this same gate                 longer than you know
Keeping our gift shops free         from British footer hooligans
No commoner carries                 such fine matching luggage
Unless his Rolex                 and his boyish good looks
Are lies                         You! Tell me your name
And your home address         and your email!
The quicker the better                 I’m off-duty in ten minutes.”

Beowulf answered him          Unlocking his smart-phone:

“We are the Geats           the mighty, mighty Geats!
Men who follow Malmo FF           Malmo FF the great!
And we have come seeking           Parken Stadium
Greatest of all stadia                   Its shining seats polished
By cheering generations                   of fat-full footer fans
We have come to cheer           Malmo FF
While they whup up on           Dansk Boldspil Union
Instruct us, watchman                   Where is the stadium
But first, where is the beer?”

                          The worthy officer
Answered him boldly:

                          “A true fan knows
The difference between           fighting on the field
And puking in the stands                   and keeps that knowledge clear
In his beery brain                   I believe your babbling
Go forward, credit cards and all           on into Denmark
Spend your money!                   Our exchange rate is generous!
And then go home bearing our love           while we bear your money.”

(Stamp, stamp, stamp)          “Tram stop to the left
Taxis to the right”

(Scholars everywhere will regret that here the burnt and torn manuscript breaks off.)
As written the caesura are physically divided in each line; electronic transmission might scramble them.
That day after his birthday
my mind is tormented
by all those white walls
just like that long stare
cooled to bottles and blicks


so my mind is tormented
by all those long hours
thinking, re-thinking intoxicated
like wooden doors shed
to sit in the paint again, I bet


my mind is tormented
by all those minutes concentrated
like the Boeing's departure
penetrated
my heart is in deep torture
my soul deteriorated


three days have elapsed
since the last rainbow I detected
up above so many coloured impressions
memories coming to the surface,
many tawny reflections
all kinds of  delightful expressions


darling, my mind is still tormented,
never stories told, no secrets ever unfolded
while driving homewards in silence
quite sad reminiscence


the rainbow on my right hand
on the horizon
is still a bright coloured band
but will soon be oblivion
like this partition....


© Sylvia Frances Chan
28th February 2014
23.55 hrs.p.m.WETime
Chilly stormy wind 2 C degrees now
nick armbrister Jan 2020
They said do not change seats on the plane

For we know your name and where you are sat

I am called Fred and I was sat in the aisle seat

I wanted to sit by the window and see the view

Especially as the big Boeing flying boat took off

The water looked so blue and lovely as we sped along

We took off and it was worth changing seats

The elderly man understood and changed

The view was awesome and to die for

The big engines pulling us along to the sky

When we arrived in New York I’d tell my mum

It was Christmas and I had been staying with my aunt

The trip was six hours and I got to look out the window

I would get into trouble if the airline clerks found out

If we crashed and burned or eaten by fish

They would go off our name and seat number

Matching it up to our ticket and passport

I was too young to have a passport

But that was fine for we were safe in the plane

Boeing built big safe planes especially water ones

Just wait till I told my mum about the view

From our big beautiful Boeing flying boat...
from an old film
Ignatius Hosiana Jun 2015
I'm planning to cross the ocean
I'm planning a swim under the sun
I'm planning to hit and follow the road
I'm planning to lift all my load
I'm planning to endure the hurt
I'm planning to fix my heart
I'm planning to tightly embrace
Water my faith and bloom in grace
I'm planning to give it another try
Even if it might as well make me cry
I'm planning to osculate again
And walk with you in the rain
I'm planning to forgive that day
Even if it still feels like yesterday
I'm planning to get up and get going
On a train, yatch or a boeing
I'm planning to lift myself from down
And instantly leave this town
Pulling my socks,tightening my laces
'Cause I'm planning on going places
There's a peace I seem not to have
I'm planning to find it, and to love
I'm planning to write another chapter
One that ends with happily ever after
NeroameeAlucard Feb 2015
Where'd you come from?
where are you going?
tell me lover,
are you lonely
the seas are cruel
as time go by
the waves roll and crash
on an infinite time
maybe a parallel place
where we go to meditate
is where you've come from
the east or west
show no restraint
from blowing us away in a Boeing
to being so gentle and dear
Like mothers milk
the queen of the sea arises and provides
her life giving love and so it flows
the queen of the sea goes where she goes
I'd still like to know
Where'd she come from?
This was inspired by the red hot chili peppers
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
talking exhaust writing, talking leaves no impetus to write,
talking is like staring into a closet or a boiler room,
there are fumes of missed chances, or of shadowy skeletons
asking for a revision of the social etiquette no made:
what is the quasi-dialectics modern society prescribes
nudging in a lie with a lie followed by another lie?
whatever the defining term, it only prescribes a loss of furthering
discussion, empowering this etiquette with solipsism;
or there this overly psychologised parent thesis,
this morbidity of the lost beauty of language, fixated
on guarantees of never being undermined - it stinks of
excluding all other uses of language, or it simply tries to
incorporate them under the banner that history, poetry, philosophy,
physics can be psychologised into one affordable use of language,
which is why when i write psychological words i am greatly pained,
e.g.:

a bit like probing someone’s subconscious for a quick
memory stimulant: in a shop two friends
passed the isles,
the music shop was blasting creedence clearwater revival...
with the song cotton fields being used
as the adequate prop for the experiment...
when i was a little bitty baby
my mama would rock me in the cradle,
in them old cotton fields back home;
it was down in louisiana
just about a mile from texarkana,
in them old cotton fields back home -*
buzzing, looking for dvds of gone girl and some science fiction
movie...
the music in the background wasn’t discussed...
but the revival of the vinyls in a corner was admired...
34 quid for the beatles’ white album... *******...
and cornershops’ brimful of asha lazy instrument at 70£...
then some tea and café awkward flirtation...
then to the pub!
two pints down the gob and the quizzical stutter gone...
the sort that means you thought for very long
and didn’t speak to someone for a long time...
nerves of caffeine and nicotine with the boogie wagon...
so yeah... prodding memory in the subconscious
as short-term, meaning long-term in the waking hour defines
the personality among other faculties of the membered brain,
whether that’s liver, kidney or lung... the brain troops
them into the body on the northern korean march sport of the army...
some say the chinese will come with a pigeon or a crane strut...
no geese in pseudo-hindu affiliations of order...
memory and the third party from sleep to wake?
how many dreams could you actually remember with the alarm clock ringing?
about none...
i wake without the alarm clock... and when waking i have a strange
dream in the 5 minutes of the snooze button imaginarily pressed...
the general anaesthetic isn’t death... because under general anaesthetic
you don’t actually dream... it’s chemical not even remotely natural.
so that part where i exclaimed: to the pub!
some landscapist on the wall with full biography lamenting
the curses of the french revolution and how the aristocracy suffered
with the new aristocracy of the newly rich... the merchants
the shoelace tiers... the cobblers and the chieftains of the cooking ***,
‘yeah, chicken hearts in onion sauce have the consistency of squid rings,’
and so... in the olden thou art a battered beetroot cheek...
this landscapist wrote four clauses about ol’ *** village known today
as gidea park... he swore that he noticed chalky graffiti
of vituperativeness... he said: no chore of violence was revealed,
since the graffiti was sworn as an oath to dig into the coal mines of melancholic bile
and simply vandalise the new aristocrats’ possessions
with words of cursing chiseled in by chalk, of the newly rich
who never passed their gains through blood but rather through molten iron or sporty leather - but you know what they say:
the merchant of mecca dies... the blood heirs become assassinated
and the four caliphs (the rashidun) emerge.
only poets have the courage to return to the beginnings
of language acquisition - they dare to mishandle language
and by mishandling it dare to usurp prosaic grammar structures,
only poets have the courage to return to the beginnings
of language acquisition, singing the alphabet:
a b c d e f g... h i j... k... el em en l o p... q r s... t u v... w x blah blah z (
with a quasi incy wincy spider timing).
that's what i mean! i hate psychologism and psychological
words in general, they literally domineer people,
it's like the jungian theory of the collective unconscious...
it's like we're supposed to remember the archetypes...
but the unconscious has no memory-content...
given the fact that the unconscious is pure imagination...
since we dream... i don't know how we remember dreams...
but it's hardly in our sleep but upon waking...
a thin red line though... 'tshh... mayday mayday...
boeing 747 flight no. 209zt is going to crash...
black box on the ready, over and out... tshh,'
unless the memory function in the unconscious is to
remember the image sequence that are dreams
upon waking... thin red line though...
oh no... how did i get tangled in this psychology *******
once again?!
unwind! i walked home in the cool autumn
wearing just a shirt...
down a very english road of haunted houses of satiated
materialism... the colour patterns of flowers
still not stampeded by winter in blush violet and indigo...
amorous chequers of flamingos and oranges...
and the sunset with a 10 - 1 bet against it...
with the moon just behind the corner of the sky
looming hazes of cloudy cider sky of the northern dark.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
Aniu,

dostałem słuchy na temat grafiki - nie jestem Surrealist'ą z poprzedniego wieku (tzn. dwudziestego), to już mineło... może i też miałbym pozory sfobody by skrytką zza popularną sztuką miałbym brać jakiegoś malarza na front jak by to było wydanie Ortodoksji zwane Penguin Publishing House, ale wolałbym mieć pod uwage geneze, tzn. kompromis braku koloru i tą nadrentą komplikacje modernizacji na tle "programming" szyfrem komputera - a ten kompromis? szyfr chemika... wiem że to może brzmić zbyt contra idei ładnego obrazka czy tez ikonoklazm'u wedle sukcesu sprzedarzy książki - ale jak orginał to orginał, bez kiszeczki, bo kto tak naprawde chce pokazać tważ niechaj pokarze ją niż maske pierw - wiec myśle o notatkach z sfer chemii w goły-trakt poezji. przesyłam jeden przykład, trzymam notatki inne takrze gotowe, ale to jeden przykład; nie chce sie chować pod skórą innych artystycznych wybryków - szczegółowo poza gruntem orginału pisma jako malunek pierw, a pismo po (ksiązka to nie Boeing 747: obraz pierw a dzwięk po - tzn. dzwięk pierw, a obraz po) - a więc i też skreślam zaufanie co do piękna malowidła jako przeciw tego samego niby ambasador'a dającego ochrone pod tytułem: brzydastwo wiersza konieczne; wole by jedno z drugim miało zaufanie, czy też wpomnienie obojga na począt i na koniec:  na trasie wątpień i zarysów warte twarzy w publicznym miejscu poza oh ah ah oh galerii. a więc zakończe - inne e.g. prześle jutro - ten jako prolog w temacie: o co mi chodzi.

Mateusz.

p.s. oczywiście ominołem ę czasem, lecz jest zachowane w przykładach głębin - ale to nazwe proto-ortografia Polaka poza Polską, takie potrzebne lustro w Angielskim 's - czyli liczby mnogej co nawet tłumacz by powiedział: sprechen Deutsche?
ALIN NUR JR Apr 2019
Just know that:
I have done all aspects of investigations,
I don't just increase the world's populations,
But am always my mother's inspirations.

Little did you know that:
I know myself am out of laziness,
I know my nature even when in sickness,
My strength is more than my weaknesses,
Don't enter into my life with your own craziness.

Just remember that:
I dropped the formality,
Now came to the reality,
Treating life with sincerity,
Which wasn't my normality.

Always know that:
I know where am going,
Knowing well what am doing,
Feel free if you're joining,
Coz you can't be my Boeing.

I can take myself far without miracles,
Only that you have always been an obstacle,
I can be driving my visions,
At the same time standing on my missions.
Who are you to judge my ambitions?

©Alin Nur Jr
Am not perfect but trying my best
goatgirl Aug 2013
I remember the setting Carolina sun,
Fluorescent fuchsia medallion  
Sitting on the landing strips at RDU, like an observant child
Making sense of our tamed world,
And counting the aluminum birds as they flee to altitudes that
Offer an illusion of freedom.

Fast forward an hour,
Zoom in on seat F, in row 18 on an ascending Boeing 747,
Almost perpendicular to Earth
And my thighs are clenched instinctively, the nervous muscle quivering,
Trying to make its own rhythm against the quaking of the craft.
Irrational fears are countered by irrational ticks.
Will you falter o’ mighty mechanical fowl?
I prayed to the wings that kept me afloat.

Not too high, Icarus, or we’ll all go down –
The pull of hubris becoming a failing harness.

The great bird began its passive decent,
A feather in the breeze.
And my worries were left at
Higher levels,
And the glittering skyline that I had been dreaming of for half of my life
Suddenly becomes near.
I consider reaching my hand through the double-pane Plexiglas oval,
To caress the jagged silhouette as it wears the sun’s dying rays like a stolen diamond ring,
To pinch with the tips of my fingers
An unsuspecting toy car and place it on a highway leading to
Somewhere else.

But time is an avalanche,
Gaining momentum quicker and quicker --
The toy cars become real,
Life-size.
And the people in them are not dolls,
But engineers, junkies, biologists, tourists,
And (soon) me.

And sometimes (only when this town gets tedious
Or the sun is lounging on the horizon,
Taking a hazy summer bath)
I (can’t help but) remember.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2017
there's just too much coming in,
you can own about 100 books and
never keep up;
a bit like alan harper's frustration,
or quiet simply meltdown in
the bookstore... "i just want to
read melville!"
    too bad, i want a nobel prize for
something or other... but i did manage
to fetch a memory of the summer
i spent reading bertrand russell's
history of western philosophy,
lying down on the balcony in my
grandparent's flat... in a building,
that if translated into western standards
of housing (or apparently none
these days) would be deemed a housing
project, or an estate...
     but then this is post-communism,
and it gave rise to an exponential reply
to the losses incurred in the second world war.
i hate to call my methods "natural selection"
but there goes the tool of metaphor...
  gone, done, gone gone... gone.
        do i need this tool, as in (doubled-up
ambiguity): the way i might need
the distinction between verb and noun?
                 enter the nerd, with a baggage
of tricks and quirps...
                    no... but i just stopped reading
books by my contemporaries...
      might be that there is some sort of
ageism roaming the planet...
                      being younger i could relate
to older people... now i can't seem to find
   a position to take with them...
                     or maybe i do...
then again once you read enough books and
say to yourself: enough! you get to
read book reviews, so a bit like an orawellian
double-think concept:
        there's a c.c.t.v. camera over there...
should i be bothered, or shouldn't i be bothered?
        and then the cascade of happenings
enter and you lead into sitting on a park
bench, where there's the alternative to c.c.t.v.:
a crow perched on a branch...
      then again, i always thought that crows
are bowing (boeing)... bow-wow...
     out of all the birds i've seen, crows actually
look humble, as if bowing, hunched...
try spotting a crow at night...
           an insomniac crow is very hard to spot...
i know that crows are capable
    of attacking storks... seen that happen with
my naked eye...
                and sure enough: a kestrel once
visited me, perched on my garden fence...
if it sat any closer i'd go all underwater cross-eyed.
          i have literally lost the capacity to *******
people... it's too consuming in terms of time
and it really ***** up your memory...
   trying to remember all the lies... beginning
with the first one? takes about 10 years off your life.
  so as book reviews go, you enter a world
of double-think... and as this book review clearly
proves, a doubling of standards to understand something...
christopher knight, the north pond hermit...
            27 years, living alone...
                                cites his favourite book that's
1,200 pages long (william shirer's the rise and fall
of the third *****)...
                         and then he cites freud:
"there is no such thing as a joke... it's only veiled
hostility."
                 rings true... but you really have to
spend 27 years alone to read a book, that, if thrown
could **** someone (in hardback edition)?
                i guess you do.
           we can't read them all...
but we'd love to just write all of them.
Ken Pepiton Jul 2021
If Dexter's Parents had not divorced and he had not moved away with his mother,
Who was beautiful as I recall, today would have played out or worked out or turned out
Differently. Very differently, considering that little twist in my six-degrees of separation base pattern
Hapt seventy-years ago, or so,
----
Watch starlings, if you have starlings, or watch congregations of kippers on Netflix.
Their steering is on auto. Do you agree? Then we are in Agreement, which is an odd place to find one's self in the midst of so great a cloud of witnesses.
-----
'e goes a gain a ginning, grinning all the while
Aye, and radioman turned on just
Now listen -Radio Mumbai

I meant, you and I agree schools of sardines and flocks of gulls are all on auto-pilot-propulsion-maintenance programs,
Right?
I thought so. The code in a gnat must be so much more elegant than the vast terabytes of programming in the GPS constrained self-drivers evolving on earth. Gnats never collide and are nearly impossible to hit, unless you have bat tools, which you don't. Nobody wrote that gnat code, right?
Of course not, evidence of programming only appears to be programming, evidence of design only looks like design it's not design. Right? So says Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, and all the people so called to win the battle for the minds of **** Sapiens Augmentatious, lest, as the confusion of Babel subsides, those minds should begin to reason together more clearly in light left after the lies standing on men's minds are revealed inferior to what our senses sensationally acknowledge. Whew. Long thought.

I meander, but you do as well. That is how things flow.
Not over immovable objections, around.

One life that was connected to mine in boyhood friendship was severed about half-way through my sixteenth year.
He died. I don't remember how. Alcohol-related, I can imagine. I did not attend the funeral, though some acquaintances did; one of whom was later my lover. She is dead now as well, too late to tell me anything. She had a baby less than a year after I returned from Vietnam, more than nine months later. That is a heavy thought, but not one I think does much good now.

So little of history is noted. So few lives function to trigger generational unctions that devolve into wars against imbalance, iniquity, slavery and death.
Fraternity, Egality, ******* *** the mob all riled-up, burn , baby, burn.
Whole people die in history's whims,
If whims they were.

Rebellions…

Watch the starlings steer through 4-d patterns eternally random,
fueled by bugs they convert to food for the soil itself.
Their life is their work and they do it beautifully. As one.

Can Boeing-Raytheon-L3 et al build a self-propelled, self-refueling drone that can fly at top-speed, maneuvering millimeters in each direction from other self-propelled, self-refueling drones while dropping their payloads without a single friendly-fire crash, ever?

Starlings don't **** on each other.

If war-profiteers could build such things, would you watch such things perform and wonder at the minds that built them, or deny such minds played any role from concept to creation, and ask who authorized development and deployment of such an expensive fertilizer distribution system that fertilizes wild weeds as well as gentled weeds?
Which would you say: "Wow, how did those get made, who paid?" or "Wow, look what billions of years and energy alone can do against absolutely insurmountable odds and impossible physics, with chaos and corruption always on the job?" Holy entropic bad moon.

Are ye not more precious than starlings, or sardines, or gnats. Would a sense pertaining to immediate locational proximity, evident in birds and fish and bugs, not be apparent in Adamkind, at least as a metaphor regarding benefits gained in knowing where you are relative to your own environment, regardless of any sense of personal purpose?

I can see it in the fact that we can agree, for good or ill.

As generations mature and regenerate, might there be patterns in the tumbling of the powerful and the powerless populations. Patterns depicting group or herd preservation by fully mentally equipped populations of mature and maturing Adamkind are detectable. Facts now overflow the cup of knowns. These are those days when knowledge is increasing and increasing and increasing to the point of being a destructive force in tightly closed minds.

Name dropping, rather than restating, Helen Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"(1966), Bertrand Russell, "The Problems with Philosophy"(1912), Pankaj Mishra, "The Age of Anger"(2017).

These three books and some browsing of names and titles the authors drop, have spurred me over the top of a rise I had not seen coming. My path had become gradually uphill without my noticing. I was interested in other things and ignoring notices from my body that oxygen stores were being depleted more rapidly than current inventory of red blood cells and nurse lymphocyte-bots can recycle the quadra-monthly disassembly turnover, H2O stores for sweat heat-dispersal systems and plasma regeneration and digestion of what little remains to be digested are now at "caution, think about stopping" levels. But I saw that from the top I might see to the top of the next rise before I chose the downhill part of my path. The down hill path determines the uphill path.
In the desert, you can see trails marked in many ways, mosses grow in least-heat zones created by angular location relationships with the sun. Breezes whisper into shade puddles by ever slow slight temperature inequilibria shifting some heat to the triggering of my sweat system.

If you were compelled to reason about every step you take in life as if it were your responsibility to regulate and control every function of your flesh vehicle in which you abide in relationship to all around you that you could harm or that could harm you, you would be mad. {mad?} illusion of reality

assumes reality is friendly here. I'm okeh
with that improbability aside,

implied as self explicatory and unfolding life…
examined,
for what its worth in words redeemed may be,
in the future, when this is what they thought,
you think, and I say know,
I thought this,
on a bet. Or an oath, depends on the fret.

Crazy mad, but angry auch. That would be unfair, because you don't know how to do what you are being compelled to do. Reports of persons who can control ****** functions not commonly consciously controlled are easily found. Such persons spend their time so countering the rolling rhythms beat by heart doors slamming shut and swooshing open in response to electricity, that, we, Adamkind, have yet to truly understand. We've no need, that which concerns us was
to be perfected, not by us.

If my use of Adamkind offends you, the reality of my benefits, wrought from my comprehension of my relation to Adam, will likely make me your enemy, in your own mind, not mine.
Ax'em, do they love po' o'hate rich?

Believe one chance in practically infinity of current evolutionary-nontheistic thought being the way things must be, then multiply the number of times you make that bet by the number of insects on earth or even by the number of mitochondria in your kidneys.

Ignoring life's delicate imbalances in light of what can be known today, breaks our minds's ability to agree perfectly. The social dichotomy that seems to arrange adamkind's affairs over eons and eras: rich and poor, have and have not, mean and meek, is ego-driven, self-benefit seeking and not part of the original program.

Contemplate the sweet influences of Pliades, silently questing the truth of hope and matter. There is more power in this stream.

Chapter end.
The future is in BASIC ATTENTION TOKENS. Mental fodder content creators can share in any ads that pay for the attention paid to your work. It is in a neotny of adaptive evolution -- if you pay attention it pays you back for letting AI know what helps more than hurts. Check it out, ats.
Ignatius Hosiana Aug 2015
I want to wake up with you'n my arms
Everyday till I kiss the world goodbye
I wish to kiss you till I hurt my gums
And holding you so tight the reason you cry
I want you to be my breath till my death
The reason I look forward to the roller coaster
So that It's you I hold each time I hold my breath
In doldrums to ultimately be my bolster
I hope you to be the company in my honeymoon boeing
The reason I give love, faith and trust another chance
The one who'll never get up and get going
Without a reason, goodbye or even just a back glance
I want you to be the cloud that finally pours the rain
To cleanse all my tears and wash away the pain
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
it's not the first time that a Bristol Belvedere
(type 192) helicopter flew over my
house...
              am i right in thinking
i'm somehow associated
with the army?
ah ****, for amusement's sake,
have a funny thought
(cognitively speaking
funny via mere thought
you're into sit-down comedy,
appropriately suggestive
as a delusion - but funny as **** -
pardon my french -
on a rocker with dell boy over 'ere,
mm mange tout, mange tout -
mon rz too, mon ż too -
honestly, check my search engine
IP address statistics,
most of them begin with:
polish diacritical z / s / c / e / a / n / o / l);
actually the Bristol Belvedere
is debatable... it might as well have
been a ‎Boeing CH-47 Chinook.
Trefild Aug 2022
a couple of words to convey ta
scurvy dictators
being, with their regimes, dirt on the face of
civilization; lyrics that may be referred to as hate speech
sorry, sans names since
you, hinderlings, tend to get sore 'kin/sim. to nates
of someone earned a good lacing (butthurt)
fO̲r misbehaving (just like y'all)
hopefully, y'all will end up burning in flames of
eternal damnation
for every singular person paraded
civilly through streets in support of good changes
and been delivered brute force in repayment
prisoners tortured, false statements
a sort of a lake of
disinformation, wars, liquidations
of those subverting a heinous
course undertaken
of course, fabrications
fO̲r legal cases (and elections, of course)
and nowadays, you've got Y̲O̲U̲r pesky agents
working on breaking
the web like Bourne which is Jason (Webb, David)
here come my warm salutations
to that stupid web regulator
that serves the dang Craymlin (got it?)
like your walking 𝓉ℴ𝒶𝓁ℯ𝓉ℯ brush, take a
[another sobriquet fitting the rhyme scheme: "toilet predator"]
hike; Y̲O̲U̲r limitations
hitting media being insubmissive ta
the sick regime which ya
sustain by dint of digital
censorship, to individuals
with views being similar
to mine, are like pork to unwave[–]ring
[the word's supposed to be read/pronounced as "unweyvring"]
Muslims; in other words, we evade 'em
(what are you gonna do about it?)
(back to dictators)
you're, like a vessel transporting blood, vain &
like someone implementing a mercy ask, craven
[vein; craving]
you're worthless like an ****** absorbed medication
to you procured a gunshot gorge perforation
as you may've gathered, as if you were **** plantation
employees, you, opportunists, sure irritate me
minus tooled up guys in uniforms & you're Swayze
some of those going politicians or power-wielders
are already bY̲ then vile people?
[Biden]
not the type to think so
that's humankind's horrible nature
highly evolved, still beasts, though
so Earth's, in a way, a
huge lair; got a shade sidetracked
like a train, my bad
I'ma explain, like that
Malaysian Boeing Ukraine skies'd had (ex-plane)
[had had]
before it got razed 'kin/sim.
[raised]
to folks storming a place which
a c#cks#cking usurper is based in
the earlier stated
"BIFOED"; once you are no more animated
like a cartoon paused, the verdict is plain 'kin/sim.
to a suit that is mourning-related
a torrid vacation, metaphorically saying
yet no point in packing Y̲O̲U̲r freaking raiment
since Y̲O̲U̲r destination's
[sins]
nothing short of pure Hades (if there is)
though (unlike some of you) I'm irreligious, but
it doesn't mean I'm cold to medieval stuff
like a hedonistic brush
with a chick replete with lust
in this realm, there can be a really hot
time for you; akin to witches stuck
to those stakes, you can wi[ɪ]nd up lit as f#ck
like after a cig. with **** you are
in the garden of the post-en–
–lightenment time going
[thyme]
which, in fact, is the reason the
Earth territory's in need of getting rid of ya
"a couple of words for dictators" by TREF1LD (TRFLD) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (to view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0)
brooke Oct 2014
I miss the things I never
did, the ferry ride I never
took, the brittle cold that
sunk to the depths of my
toes and the sushi place
down the street from my
house. You can whisper
that I'm doing the same
thing but I miss the leaves
at EDCC and the rain,
quality frozen yogurt
and the front row at
Loews Theater, I miss
the sound of my wheels
privy to the Boeing freeway

You can whisper that I'm feeling
the same way but I miss things I
don't recognize, the drive past
the lighthouse and the neighbor
who had music too loud, the
shy cashier at Fred Meyer
and also their apple
display that was
aesthetically
pleasing.
(c) Brooke Otto 2014

(A Dear God Letter.
Kaylin Martin May 2011
What did the world have to say
On this bright and clear mocking May day?
The day that physically mimicks 9/11.
Do you remember that fateful morning where so many went to heaven?
The plotters death was marked this very day
After it was announced that a group of SEALS took him away.
I'm not sure its a good thing to be happy of his demise.
I've been asking the same question all day...why?
I'll tell you why:

I remeber being a little girl standing by the TV,
Watching the planes and buildings on the screen.
One.
It seems to be some kinda accident..
Two.
Its a terrorist attack, isn't it?
I saw that 747 bank left and drive hard
Into the side of that building that blew out tiny shards
Of glass and fire raining from above,
Along with the paperwork and the terrorists love.
Shocked cries from the street and gasps filled the air
Manhattan was on display and the whole world stared.
Then awhile later at 9:03 a.m.,
The shock and horrid pictures were played over again.
As another Boeing flew through the side.
We were all wondering.."How many have died?"
Cries filled the air as one building
P
     L
           U
               M
                     M
                           E
                               T
                                   E
                                       D
To the ground.
And the screach of hot metal was the only sound
Ashes and smoke hung over the city like plague,
Not letting us in on how many lives it had claimed.
I vividly remember watching people fall through the sky.
Not taking death by fire but instead...






















Suicude...




Then we watched as another fell story by story.
And when the air finally cleared, there was nothing more to see.

T           L E             U B           T H            D E            Y B            A D
  H      I      S       R        B      E      A       A      E       R      O      S
     E P          O F              B L           T M            V E            D Y

Soon unearthed a cross and an American Flag.
This country became stronger with every tear that fell from her eye.
We soon set off into the hills of the desert with one mission: Osama dies
It may have taken 10 years but we found you hiding like a coward.
I hope you got the death you so rightly deserved.
Just remember: America is not perfect at all.
But we stood as one nation under god on that day in the fall.
This whole country rejoiced when the news was said,
Obama came on the screen and said "Osama is dead"

If you hit us first, we'll hit you harder.
We won't stop until we've finished what you've started.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
i can't believe we only managed to
re-enter plato's dream of a society,
being recited by pauper lovers,
for need of acceptance, but no aerodynamics!
bring me the boeing and i'll bring
the thistles of the **** thing being aired
among curled-up turtles and hedgehogs,
flap flap! ****, spot the seagull
or the copper-head of a churchill shat on
by a pigeon for a good-luck testimony!
and i was wearing my underwear
if you cared to mind; religious schools
forgot the 1960s drug revolution, they were
teaching a concern of sniffing glue...
**** me... glue?! with all that wine!
what an oddity.
Toxic yeti Feb 2019
You know
What I said that a ran to take off from this planet
Like a Boeing to the moon??!!
I am flying
High like a Boeing
I have found peace
And I have found my freedom
It was a butterfly
Breaking free
For I am me.
Gods1son Sep 2018
Those pillow fights
Set my soul high like boeing 777 flight
When you hug me tight
My heart burdens turn light

With you in my arms
I'm confident like Navy SEALs with their arms
You are my lucky charm
On rough days,
your thoughts get me going like a tram

Remember that day I got you ******
My day was totally eclipsed
It was restored when we kissed
Now you know why I call you Peace!
wordvango Sep 2014
737
With the certainties put in my head
by prophets so knowing
that a heaven of eighteen virgins
awaits me
I am glad, and certain

To crash this Boeing 737
into your ******* head.
Àŧùl Sep 2017
Last night I stood atop the North tower,
And as I gazed down from the roof,
I hallucinated a Boeing hurtling,
I saw it collide and felt the impact,
Soon I saw and heard the fear.

The fear vibrated downwards,
It was a nightmare of old memories,
It was a fear of odd memories,
Of memories that I never had,
A nightmare with open eyes.
My HP Poem #1661
©Atul Kaushal

— The End —