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CK Baker Jan 2017
Leg off the table
you red face recruit!
put on the offensive
and break down
the bolted door!
you are the soul saver
the peddle maker
the calibrator
with colored handbills
and front line
rhetoric

join the masquerade
in ivy league style!
politicking with
cunning guile
invisalign smile
blackened vile
bleeding the funnel
with gold plate omega
and crocodile shoes

get on stage
and dance you fool!
you are the headline maker
the pantomime juggler
the compromised closer
pull out that 5 page review
(bullet points only please)
and polish those weathered lines!

did you give it your all?
the door tags
and pleasantries
the tidings
and clippings
the irrevocable claims
and postured blames
all those impressionable basics
put to the test?

you know the call
(straight from
those cold academics)
the pie chart gurus
and contract killers
(complete with bone in finger)
whipping their
frenzied crew
in an all night
charade

old yellar
and the gatekeeper
sure seem amused
(sharpening their inquest
behind closed doors)
firing up the shiit storm
with those hostile priicks
and a slew
of insatiable
cures

there’s laughter from the back room
the dripping nose
and wavering hand
the cut white lines
and checkpoint tales
the pipeline romance
and lacking form
(of a basic essential
character!)

soundboard
and narratives
for logging time
slouching on the
steel case
over moot points
ready to play
the 3 weight
butter card
(if need be)

might I remind you
it’s only an inquiry
(with a slight hint of concern!)
surely no
malfeasance
or deception intended
so step back from
the melt down
and cut to the chase!

headlines to breadlines
penthouse to outhouse
those immoral pursuits
have taken their toll
(haven’t they?)
madman or rogue
(you take your pick)
for the scores
and tabulations
are final

shame on you
for the foul play
the bold hypocrisy
and order desk games
the back stabbing blames
and spurious names
just sign on the dotted line ~
this banter
is killing me
Edward Coles Feb 2015
Once I held you in my arms,
I loved you in my sleep,
above the traffic
and the circumstance,
above the slaughter of the sheep.

You made me sing at my guitar,
a grown man falling to defeat.
Now I cannot find The Answer
in the company I keep.

The game is rigged, we know it is,
in a hustler's *******,
the bank cartels
and corn-fed chicken
descend upon the weak.

I held you in my arms
on a precipice brave and steep,
above the breadlines
and the cannibals,
above the slaughter of the sheep.

You have me writing poetry
about landscapes left unseen,
you kissed the addict on the mouth
and now he's looking to get clean.

But the day is long, you know it is,
forgive me for sounding bleak,
a sucker for
those sad, sad songs,
and that chemical retreat.

I am not working on perfection
in a lifetime stretched and brief,
but I am working on a promise
that for once,
I intend to keep.

See, I've got a knack for giving up,
for feigning inner peace,
I've had my fill of oil spills
and the slaughter of the sheep.

You've felt it too, that burdened love,
the dead-end of familiar streets,
you lay down with him,
habitual ease;
lilac skin now a slab of meat.

The dignitaries come,
the friends you have to meet,
a compromise of ancient ties,
amongst the ******
and the thief.

Words are falling fast for you,
though I lack the skill to piece
all the fragments you paint for me
in this temple of disease.

The race is run, you know it is,
a pace we couldn't keep,
our lungs are full
of cigarettes,
our tongues of old deceit.

The Lie is out amongst the crowds,
but I have no time for war and peace;
I am slipping into
my lover's robe,
into your twisted sheets.

Once I held you in my arms,
I loved you in my sleep,
this wolf's disguise,
those bells that chime
at the slaughter of the sheep.
A spoken word piece. I think it works better when you read as you listen:

https://soundcloud.com/edwardcoles/the-slaughter-of-the-sheep
John Landry Nov 2013
"They're selling postcards of the hanging" Bob Dylan


Frolicking in the Hague festooned
as if some monarch's golden jubilee
not a room left empty in all the land
queues for miles to get a ringside seat
at what is billed as The Trial of Man
as W, ****, and Rummy sit chained
to the bionic calves of barstools while
Condo Lisa bears witness atop a piano
ferreted throughout the conurbation
breadlines and circuitous routes
recalling the Nicaraguan case
low on the radar of short-term
the disunited states of disarray
vetoes its own trial's outcome
and it is business as usual
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
This dot kami’s ‘Nam when I see you’re all neutral
To futile lords still passin’ Acts of Removal
Pretentious performers as if upon stages
Of casting call characters caught up in cages
Like ****** who off-shore **** the poor on vacations
I’m diggin’ up dirt on the founders’ plantations
When bail-outs are ballots and bullets are mallets
Why not be a rabbit hole in Hefner’s palace?
And dare call it talent, a gift or a passion
Just model behavior for slaves to a fashion
Show running the breadlines when crimes are a dime
In the dozens of ***** Weinsteins on your minds

Instead of the felons when court is in Sessions
Instead of the under-oath treason confessions
In rapid succession they feed you the buzz
Until nobody cares what the debt ceiling was
When the roof has been raised for the privatize party
The right wants us dead and the left shows up tardy
I’m sorry “you people” are making me sick
Guess I’ll just pop a pill from the cabinet pick
Like has-been Michael Flynn’s and these Ex-Tillersons
Resource hogs cloggin’ bogs up with smogs of odd jobs
They’re the slEASIEST Slytherins still seemin’ Jesus
Pro-life until *** aid is the fetus
Egregious excesses of who the **** needs this
Huge 2nd place trophy wife ivory tower
Big guns for a stickless diplomacy coward

Here’s my ******* tricklin’ down your faces
You blatantly ****** repeal and replacists
You war-profiteering, grand **** of old Racists and fakers, uranium cakers
Still stuffing the stockings of doomsday clock-makers
With melting North Pole lumps of coal-hearted cash
‘Till every last Christmas trees nothing but ash
As the fascist machine builds its pyramid scheme
On the dreams of the themes of your Disney World screen
But the credits will roll as the talking heads stroll in
The shoe bombs of Terrorist’s livelihoods stolen
But I leave ‘em spinnin’ like Christopher Nolan
mark john junor Oct 2013
the road may have been long'
but you were allways comfortable
with the top down in florida sunshine
breeze blowin away all thouse dark thoughts
man of your word
you sat in a moral court of small minds
and put up with her advances
and the ever present escapism
that haunts her every step
your words fire like rifles in the crisp dawn
but only the wooden soldiers fall
benith the bullets of your breadlines
she lay there with you'
and caressing the poor as she looks at you
with such tears
and such assembled broken heart stories
motherless and lost
the beggar passes his pan
your way
coins and a few loose buttons
times are tough under the I-95 bridge
Onoma Apr 8
Botero's ballooning

figurations parade

into Giacometti's studio.

greeted by emaciations

that seem cast in disheveled

breadlines.
The wind's dropped
along with my aspirations
the clapometer needle's
not moving,
( should I use the swingometer?)

Those good old days are back
open fires and a sack of
'nutty slack'
bow and scrape
skin your knees
say
thankyou sir
not forgetting please,

breadlines
hard times
rationing and
Buddy
has no more dimes,

we'll all be singing for our supper
up a gum tree
or **** creek
today or next week,

the wind's dropped
the music's stopped
grab a chair.
Caroline Shank Apr 2020
Did you see the one about the
serial killer?  Or the making of
Die Hard?

Laying back in my chair the TV
drones on.  The world as I
know it spins out of control.

It's going to be a landscape
of empty restaurants and
breadlines.  Of bad hair
and toilet paper.

Don't feel safe in the
tribulation.  A white horse
is about to wait at your
locked gate.
.

Caroline Shank

— The End —