"broil" poems
an incredible incite (the ruthless volatility of words)
~for L.B.~
the only place of solitaire solitude in the city accompanies me
like a faithful country dog that doesn’t know better to be afraid,
of moving cars, sleepless night terrors and unscripted “dreams”
where image and words say come “follow me” with ruthlessness and no cloying come hither looks and
see and take and recall with perfect midnight blue sky clarity for
the incredible incite of credible insight
surfacing unexpectedly in a intemperate pool of slushy snow,
that will be an ice storm of painful confrontations with naked
inner truths standing outside in sunny sub zero playground
there is great risk. volatility gone wild. when the speed
governor is removed and you live at 100 mph on local streets,
when the merest slight of an accidental incidental touch
transforms into an incite incident and hell is the threat
that you will not die today and your own words will ruthless
pull from the nerve places where sensible and sensual cannot
coexist and this write this script is a poetical insight inside, an
incredible incite and what your spilling is spaghetti sauce blood
when you left your brain on broil, instead of the faking daily of
slow simmering ineffectual intellectual words that just don’t
cut the crap. your addiction complete, you cannot live without
the incredible incite, the ruthless volatility of words,
otherwise why rough write what you see
in the blind
beyond the blind
1/6/18 5:03am
Jan 6, 2018
Jan 6, 2018 at 5:17 AM UTC
It didn't matter if it was
August, and the air felt like an
oven on broil, or if it was
February, and the dumpsters
were icecicles to the soul.
We needed ***** and since we
didn't have jobs, the cans, at
5 cents a piece were our
aluminum tickets to sweet relief.
The magic click.
Enough cans meant a bottle of
whiskey
*****
gin,
anything to dull the
sharp, vivid pain of life.
We sifted through
cat ****
catsup
***** diapers
discarded ***** mags,
and all the other
garbage from the
rich and the poor.
One winter morning,
I threw back a heavy metal lid,
and there was a fat
raccoon looking up at me.
If Bacchus or Dionysus were
smiling, we found a
full bottle.
It happened once in
a while during summer when
the college kids headed home.
Miles of walking,
freezing or burning up,
We were the aluminum
cowboys.
Jul 2, 2025
Jul 2, 2025 at 12:34 PM UTC
Mix hormones, sprouting hair, and teenage angst in melting ***
Add 2 cups of Varsity Sports
Blend in at least 3 leadership positions
Sprinkle AP & Honors classes liberally
Acquire obscure talent such as playing a Theremin
Add long-term anxiety disease
Brag constantly about how you helped Jakito, a small African child, on a mission trip
Drain all traces of possible love connection
Substitute sleep for academia
Bring stress to boil
Add spoonful of “legacy”
Separately mix “White Guilt” with a cup of diversity (Native American if available)
Marinate in SAT classes
Spread 2300mg of SAT on top
Shake Well
Ice decoratively with essays about Jakito
Most batches must be rejected
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 4:39 PM UTC
Cruisin' across the Sahara in my 1952 Cadillac,
I was singing along to a song, thinking about Jack Kerouac.
Coming over the next rise, I never expected to see,
Such a conflagration of Walruses looking back at me.
Passing a lone daisy under the sun set on broil,
They were making their way across the big sandy soil.
Thoughts evolving and revolving inside of my brain,
Led me to believe I might be under a bit of a strain.
Searching for my bottle of purified mineral water,
I quenched my thirst and prayed for no less than an hour.
That these visions of sea mammals would quickly pass.
And leave me to sing songs in my old Cadillac.
Jan 23, 2011
Jan 23, 2011 at 11:09 AM UTC
At the coldest of all times,
In the presence of harsh weather,
I as a grass,
As helpless as ever;
Too much cook spoils the broil,
That's why grazing brings so much boil,
To the forsaken grasses,
Who can deliver their spleen to nobody,
Favour! But to themselves!
The rain flogs the hell,
The sun scorches the heaven,
Out of the grasses, as a spell,
They can deliver their spleen uneven
Favour! But to themselves!
The brainless bulk of extractive meat,
Also move to them to cheat,
And graze until they are tired,
Mindless of whether the grasses are fired.
Do they not know that the **** of the fowl aches?
Or do they pretend that they do not.
Can they just eat their cakes?
And continue to keep their font?
Being a grass,
For full days of the hours,
I see our helplessness,
I feel the harsh treatment we have received,
And the many ways we have been deceived.
Erosion comes and sweeps us away!
Rain falls and saps our nutrients away!
Sun shines and shrinks our leaves unprunned!
The brainless bulk of extractive meat graze and
chew us away!
Our colours turn to milkless tea!
At whose mercy are we?
As a grass, I cry, I weep
But no help comes...
I'm short of words...
Yet no help comes...
Nigeria!
Where is the future of your people-the grasses!
As favour is to themselves!
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 10:51 AM UTC
Your words fade to grey—
When you take advantage of them they broil away.
Once a bright yellow, you filled the room with light.
Now as dull as a beaten blade
The room remains hollow
Empty.
No matter how small it gets—
Hidden away. Those words you always said
Creep beneath my feet and follow me into bed.
Haunting my dreams
I can’t sleep—
I can’t cry—
I can’t eat—
Unable to die,
I crawl—
Into that hollow room.
I fill it with stolen red tears—
To drown in them,
Will be better than to hear
I love you
From your lying—
Grey—
Lips.
Mar 5, 2011
Mar 5, 2011 at 10:22 AM UTC
As a child, the 80 acres seemed like the whole world, with its ponds and streams and sunlit meadows.
It looked like Eden to my young eyes.
I chased the lambs and dragonflies, caught tortoises and toads.
The banks of the streams looked like cliffs to me, as I watched the suspended shadows of the bluegill in the water below.
With July's on broil, I found shade beneath a black locust tree, and tried to figure out, how I could use the thorns as fish hooks, to catch dinner for the night.
Evening set the sky on fire and the clouds were all a blaze.
Passion found me early, so much land, and nothing but time.
Then dusk turned gently into night and the summer Moon looked sad, like a giant porch light left on, for a lover that's never coming home.
As I lay in bed the cicadas buzz tucked me in, and from the pond came to bullfrog sad song, and I knew he was lonely like me.
May 10, 2023
May 10, 2023 at 11:08 AM UTC
Here I write some recipes,
From our anti--football league,
How to cook a football totally,
Must boil it for twelve hours, ritually,
Then you can dice it and fricassee,
Or maybe bake, broil, and grill,
What won't fatten, shall fill,
Or you can make mini-football custard, eh,
Chocolate footballs in a bowl, let's say,
We call it Footy Iles Flotante,
Star sweet in the anti-football restaurant!
Then a recipe for Grand Final Day, swell,
It's called footy Croquembouche Noel!
Hear the anti-footballers yell!
You, too, can write recipes,
For the Anti-football Society,
It's like dining at the Waldorf Astoria,
Anti-football recipes from Melbourne, Victoria!
Mar 31, 2017
Mar 31, 2017 at 3:37 PM UTC
I find solace in the melody of the bamboo.
Awaiting the chorus of sunlight
ripping through the canopy
onto the dry leaf strewn clearing caked by the broil of the maker.
All the while a few rebels dance in a cyclone
adding value in their non-conformity to an almost perfect landscape,
a landscape only blemished by tyre tracks, a harsh reminder of the hands of humans in every facet, crevice, orifice, every jar of this earth.
Jan 16, 2012
Jan 16, 2012 at 10:32 PM UTC
~~~
how to cook a poem/poetic theology
so many ways,
but one favored
after oh so many trials
after oh so many errors
taste tastings, plenty,
some good, some feh
some inspired, some liared,
but it's the process
the methodology,
that becomes your
poetic theology,
of
how to cook a poem
slow simmer,
as if it was
a hearty filling stew,
with the red wine,
you flavored,
for style unique
stew
over it,
add pinches of
contradicting adjectives
icy hot,
bland spice
and not everything nice,
bitter herbs,
fatalistic flaws
make it
to
make the left and the right
side of the brain
argue and engage,
let it taste of the foment,
of unease, disease,
and the
coming to terms
with the
alternating au courant currents,
of fashionistas
don't forget
the final seasoning, the finishing
reasoning,
the perfect certainty
of momentary
peace
uncovered, derived, home grown,
after a thirty years war,
and the
perfect uncertainty,
you still aren't sure,
which side won
and why
some fry in nastiness,
some broil,
flaming to burn away,
some boast to roast
of the average angst
that breathing
seems to
require
some peel,
some imbibe the raw,
all get sorted
for even what
writ in haste,
all sourced from ingredients,
taking years of seconds,
in the assembling
the trial and error
the preparation,
required for living a life
cooking poetry
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 5:17 PM UTC
from a freezer
to a tub of boiling grease
i travel
submerged in the heat
with countless others
i broil
my mind unharmed for now
my outer layer
becoming hard
crispy
lifted out in a basket
and put on a plate
im thankful
for the escape
slowly others leave me
COME BACK
TAKE ME WITH YOU
where could they possibly be going
i feel a slight amount of pressure
on my bottom ridges
the ground moves away
i enter a black hole
resting on a wet bed
until the barriers raise
and slam down
and i feel ...
i feel...
death
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 11:25 AM UTC
MINESTRONE NIGHTS (on the summer of 2018)
Deep in the incubus of fantasy
As torrid painter makes its art
Rips a flash of an epiphany
A plaintive whisper of the heart
Hobgoblin summer full of slobber
Beget febrile reveries unkind
As dance character’s macabre
A three-ring circus in my mind
Each minestrone moldy night
When body craves boreal slumbers
Akin cat on hot tin roof I fight
Dank sog my sleep encumbers
Comes morn aft time eternal
Half charged at start of day
Abscond sodden dreams infernal
Tormenting orb is up to play
I was hot before I even knew
Never really did cool down
Too warm again, for morning dew
Vague slumber’d avec frown
Haven't slept for an age or eon
Cadaver tacky to the tepid touch
Arise, trepid to perspire, like peon
Labour in this broil is just too much
©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness 2018 – All rights reserved)
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 7:58 AM UTC
Silhouetted against an orange sunset
in expectation of eve's subset
Halloween night, black cats
with green eyes vie for bats
ink-of-night garbed witch flies
on a straw broom in the skies
she concocts her plan to broil a brew
a potion, a mighty how-do-you-do
to poison anyone who thwarts
take note of her nose warts
don't cross her or you will surely die
and she will **** if her plans go awry
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 11:21 PM UTC
A thousands spires that whirl and dervish,
high upon the scorching currents in the air.
Across the empty desiccated wastelands,
so long parched without waters soft repair.
Like gyrating embodied souls rotating,
to lay scar deeply carved upon the land,
driving clouds of rock like pelting hail,
headlong until all is shattered into sand.
Flashes of lightening and thunders call,
clouds cast in iron, observers of the scene,
testament in muted light from up on high,
sole recall of still waters that once had been.
Desolate open and forsaken landscape,
where only wind gives motion to the world.
Leaden clouds of rain without a falling,
static charged clouds constantly re-curled.
How long ago it was that life had left,
its own scars and marks upon the soil.
until through life's' own achievements,
a once beautiful world was left to broil.
In that not so distant time when remnants
of the miracle that was life is erased and gone.
not one thing that we have ever seen or know,
nor memory of who we once were shall live on.
Nov 1, 2021
Nov 1, 2021 at 1:02 PM UTC
To the lake
is where our prayers
were air.
We dipped
our poles in the water
and bobbed
with our floats
in the bladder of blackness.
Nelle and Sabrosa
laid down together at the edge
of the still body
as the beasts of night
laid down at their feet.
Me, Dang, and Matt
took sips straight
from the mouth of Kentucky.
The night
creamed me.
Burst into a thousand
remembrances and I wanted to cry
with the fish.
I got angrier and angrier
and eventually we all left,
because I was yelling too loud
and the fish burrowed deeper
into the stomach,
a stomach I had yelled at
as love.
With so many poles
and so many fish
I slipped into the lake.
Let my body
wilt in that sink
where babies were made
with dead bodies,
dead ******* and dead *****
and spasmodic fish bodies
that were made for one thing.
I thought that thing was love,
that's what got me yelling.
The beasts let their whiskers get wet,
even their paws,
as they tapped at me in that water,
hoping for me to rise,
a flotilla of flesh
upon which they could feed.
And so we walked away
from the lake
wet,
and drunk,
the windows down
feeling the paws
and gills
in connection with life.
Nelle and Sabrosa
holding each other
in beach towels.
Me sitting in the front on a plastic sheet
Dang had previously reserved
for the fish we would some day
broil and eat.
So,
I sat on a plastic sheet,
made for love and loss
of the lake.
I sat on the bladder and
upcoming womb
from which night ******
and then made love
with the dead beasts
and catfish
of a shallowness reserved
just for me.
Mar 13, 2012
Mar 13, 2012 at 3:54 AM UTC
I envy you.
You are unmoved by emotion,
Unfettered by your lack of clean underwear,
Unaffected by childish tears and sighs.
Able to numb rigidity through intoxicating brew;
Effortlessly escape to an alternate reality,
Filled with machine guns, a man jumping over turtles, portals of orange and blue.
I may speak, and you may not hear.
I may think, and you may not wonder.
I may seek, and you may not offer.
I envy your indifference,
Your reluctance to physical affirmation.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 10:16 PM UTC
the traffic’s wet with oil
while the drivers sweat and broil
and ACs blast at least as loud as
stereos, pulsing to beat the heat
and the sun does all it can
to oblige a gift of all it’s got
and all we’ve got to say is,
“it’s hotter’n hell out here”
when all we’ve ever known
is all the sun has ever shown,
somehow eclipsed by our universal
lust; the wish to reach stars
we’ve never felt but have always seen
squinting at us from aeons ago.
Jul 26, 2012
Jul 26, 2012 at 1:31 AM UTC
Dark clouds roil
Broil
Dust up
The dirt.
While winds howl
Through to the bowels
Of the earth.
Rains pour
More
Water than the earth can hold
In her cupped hand.
Overflow, purify, cleanse
It mends
The soul of the warrior girl.
A moment of calm peace
Like the fleece
Of the clouds that part their lips
To let through a speck of light.
Then clench their jaw
In awe
Of the courage they have observed.
Storms subside
Inside
The wet earth renewed
And dries its tears with the green of spring
Then new life sprouts
All about
And sheds the shroud of winter.
Opening eyes,
She sighs.
The storm has passed
And brought hope anew.
What winds could not blow away,
The rains did cleanse,
Today!
Apr 11, 2010
Apr 11, 2010 at 6:08 PM UTC
Steps steep of swindler's confession
A monstrous sleep that Pike's definition
Chard broil eggs on a winter of sleep
Jul 25, 2015
Jul 25, 2015 at 8:33 AM UTC
Where did he steal that fowl he has a-roasting on his fire
He looks a ***** scoundrel, a godless **** a liar
I've heard that they’re all rapists every woman’s dread
And when they've finished with ‘em they leave their victims dead
I've heard that they eat babies and broil them on a spit
‘Tis known in other the villages and that’s the truth of it
Thus whispered fearful peasants behind the soldiers pack
Should he leave them to the enemy they’d **** soon want him back
Hold your peace cried the village priest at his Sunday sermon
He’s come to fight the tyrant with the Dutchman and the German
They pay in gold for the food they take not plunder us like the French
And they’d hang them from the gallows should they **** any *****
And when it comes to fighting there’s none better, braver, bolder
Be he uncouth and foul of mouth God bless the British soldier
Be grateful that he’s come good folk be on your knees and pray
For we all will need god’s mercy on this June’s eighteenth day
For he’s fighting for our freedom for the sake of me and you
And many will be falling soon near our village Waterloo
Written to commemorate the200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo which saw the final defeat of the self proclaimed emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on Sunday the 18th June 1815
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 2:23 PM UTC
Do you condemn me for my thoughts?
Hate me for my honesty?
Cast me out,
Tear me down,
For your idea of sanity?
Do my words frighten you?
Curse you to contemplate?
Bring your blood,
To a burning,
Bubbling broil?
Do my riddles evade you?
Ceasingly seamless?
The madness
Full of alliteration,
And complex metaphors?
Keep lying to yourself, with your heavy heart,
As I bleed words to this page and entitle it “Art”.
This is not about pain felt for what I went through.
It’s about who I am;
I am certainly not you.
So continue to read,
As I reveal how far you have fallen.
Don’t believe me?
Then how’d you end up on the bottom?
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 12:05 AM UTC
Shifting apocalypse in a bleeding sky,
Wind whipped fire
And the maelstrom that hates at it's centre.
A dark eye
Malignant,
The unforgiving blackness
That hides beneath normality.
And the soft cloud layer, suspended
Above the broil of bitterness
That threatens to overwhelm.
Aug 2, 2013
Aug 2, 2013 at 3:52 PM UTC
she is alabaster and brine
she is a faster lairs line
unwind her spooled mind
memory a keepsake in hand conquers a trinket lost
eat mandrake to the root but what the cost
unspoiled her thoughts broil in her head
steam from every seam
salty her groin but she declines the offered coin
she will reap the bliss of your salty kiss
as you bite her short hair she will sing a country tune so fair
she is alabaster and brine
a master of wasted time
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 3:46 PM UTC