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Sometimes I sink into the couch when I'm deflated,
Then I jump up, limp over to a crutch, and become fixated.
Carvin a rut, punchin myself in the gut, getting faded.
Even the most fortunate son has misfortune to come.
I don't believe in bad luck.
I believe that you ****** up and that luck is based on mistakes, so you're the one that makes it.
Don't blame the universe for the problems that you've created.
Live as an example of someone who is always elated to view all things as a whole,
And chooses to focus on what's good for his or her own soul,

Fully accepting the ugly and embracing the beautiful,
Not reachin a peak then sinkin so low,
Just grind up some tea and speak to the old
Who inhabit the art that you teach, but don't reach for the gold,
Cuz focus on money keeps you away from your goals.

Restore your faith in humanity.
Replace it with insanity.
Product placement causes cavities.
Your plan is ****** sick.

Weekend warriors,
Just a buncha losers, all a buncha boozers.
Ya’ll take all the cash you earned and get your wrists slapped
Cuz you hand it all back to your rulers.

Put a rock on your lady’s finger, take a trip down to the jeweler, and then later you can trade her in for a sequel of half the value like a gamer, but who are you kidding, you ain't no player.  
By 2 years and 3 babies later you’re filing papers,
And the rock gets used as the paper's weight,
And who gets to keep it is a bigger debate than
Who has to get up and feed the kids every morning before eight,
And rush em off to school before beatin a desk for 5 days straight.
But that rock ain’t worth ****, isn’t that great?

She drowns in a pool of tears while he drowns his in beer til he gains enough courage or cowardice to stand on the tracks
And waits to be splattered like paint on the front of a freight.
Or maybe it’s the other way around since all males and females don’t share the same traits.
Either way they're all left with the same bad taste in their mouths, and they can't spit it out, no matter how much they try to *****, cry, smile, or pout.
So they just wait, and they wait, and they wait, and ask "Why?",
But that's not what life is about.
Get up. Get Out. Step away from the couch.
Start stepping to the beat of your own drum
Instead of beatin the beaten path;
Trying to climb a ladder with no rungs.
A refined freestyle from the other day.
Sam Bowden Dec 2014
Every time people start to rise up, a whole buncha problematic mess gets thrown around regarding VIOLENCE.
So, what is "violence" really?... It's the use of force. Plain and simple.
What makes folks uncomfortable (who are otherwise comfortable in this system) is that UPRISING IS A SOMETIMES VIOLENT (read: forceful) REACTION TO SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE: Yes, just like the Hunger Games...
Thus, there are many types of violence...
The fact that we are paying taxes that are funding the genocide and ****** of people of color (here and abroad) is violence.
People with guns (former slave patrols and overseers, now cops) who come from outside our community and treat our folks as criminals on the daily is violence.
Capitalism, i.e. wage/property/ecology-based exploitation in the name of profit is violence.
The fact that LA County spends more $$ than anywhere in the world on prisons and police is violence.
The fact that the US locks up more of its own people than any other country on record is violence.
US aiding/funding the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel is genocidal violence.
From Congress, to the boardrooms, to the classrooms, from the gaze, to the unwanted touching, to the ****, to the pay, Patriarchy everyday, is violence.
A few people jacking some **** at Walmart or breaking a window is really minimal violence in comparison.
A couple people throwing **** at armed cops is not serious violence.
The idea of owning property that other must rent to live is violent.
Systemic, chronic, global insecurity in the form of material poverty is violence.
Wage slavery is violence.
Gentrification is violence.
The War On Youth, i.e. the School-to-Prison pipeline, and, thus the War-on-Drugs with its attending 76% recidivism rate in the prison-industrial complex, whose populations are disproportionately black males, is violence.
The fact that people can't go to the doctor and dentist, or eat food every day is violence.
Deportations are violence.
Homophobia is violence.
The world's largest global military that vaporizes people without due process in dozens of countries violating their biophysical and national sovereignty is violence.
The United States government sanctioning the ****** of non-white, but especially Muslim bodies across the world... is violence.

So, when you condemn violence, do you mean resistance?
Because there is a whole lot of violence you should be condemning instead.

Adapted from Emilio Lacques-Zapien
softcomponent Dec 2013
lecture hall 2.0 complete me upsidedown
and i will fall like ***** toilet-paper thrown
and missed the bowl. in the esoteric words of
Kant, 'I had therefore to remove knowledge,
in order to make room for belief.
' he under
-stood there is nothing objective and to pretend
there is, one must live in the shadow of God and
call it "science." buncha ******* reductionists
pretending they're nuffin but chemical reactions.
buncha religious freaks pretending they ain't religious.
science, science, science..
A L Davies Nov 2012
(in the dream it is late March)
there's a light rain in Montréal & the sky
is a gorgeous, early-morning variety of slate grey. imagine the lid
of an old metal garbage-can.
everything is dismal, perfect. and quiet; even the people leaving the bars are silent.
dismally, perfectly, silent.

ghosts of old cats—belonging maybe to ghosts of old ladies who lived, say, just off St. Lau, back
in the eighties—ramble downhill, in the direction of rue St. Catherine (Saint Cat! O patron of felinity!) ,
between the legs of those spilling out from the trendy & ****** clubs.
some of the ghosts wander out into the street, flash thru car tires that would've (& have) (at one time)
smashed them to pulpy carpet on the asphalt.
(who goes to pick them up then? when the tires have had their way with them over & over?
when they are just hair & porridge by a sewage grate?)

after a greasy smoked-meat-on-rye or a nightcap at somebody's place, just off the drag,
i'm in a sodden, but warm overcoat, hands curled in the bottoms of it's pockets; mis-shapen mass
of hair plastered to my scalp; walking en bas de la montagne just past the McGill Medical Centre.
—this late, the busses back downtown are never on time.
(driver's probably having a few smokes before he starts that long tour down. full up of drunk kids,
taking one another back to their dorms, etc.)
(and what does he have, to look forward to at shift's end?
        i. a cranky wife—past her prime?
        ii. a buncha dogs—yapping for attention?
        iii. some ******* kid—who's disrespectful & won't shut up or turn his stupid ******* punk-rock down?

—it's enough to make me patiently wait.  i'll wait forever, as long as that isn't me.)

...'spose I'LL have a cigarette too. waiting
in the bus shelter on Ave. Des Pins looking down over the
football fields of the McGill Athletics Dept.
still lit up. no sun yet but
now at 4 AM a dull inch or two of lightened grey out there on the horizon.. dawn will come,

though i'd rather not face the day. all the mornings are so hard after nights like this.
bound to be hungover &
spend the day hiccuping in bed texting some girl; maybe get up
in the late afternoon t'fix coffee, toast & eggs.
sit on the balcony,
make my little guitar sigh,
and try to feel normal until i [have to] puke.

"—and who was that girl i spoke to for so long at St. Sulpice last night? how many gin-tonics did she let me buy myself, nattering on?.. probably too drunk to even get her number."
"—maybe Sean or Dylan will know if she came thru with anyone we knew.."

the bus is finally here. twenty-and-three minutes late. the back of it probably smells of
stale smoke, dim sun, and sweaty, rain-soaked cloth, absorbed from jackets into the seats—the eau du jour.
it's always a bump 'n **** ride down the hill; bound to,
with the other handful of dumb & silent riders, drunkenly sway,
(or is it a natural compensation of the body, to groove along with the curves and stops?)
back & forth like carcasses of half-dozen slaughtered pigs
swinging on their hooks in back of a meat wagon..
(i'll end up getting on, but only for three blocks. i'll ******* walk the rest of the way home,
after that comparison. to hell with the rain.)

SIX MINUTES LATER:
(Avenue Des Pins still—4 blocks closer to downtown)

directly in line now with McGill campus via McTavish; this way i can
cruise down thru the silence of the main drag having a couple smokes drinking beer
(copped a 40 at a Dep before i left St. Lau—frosty under my arm enshrouded by brown paper.)
& be left to my own thoughts for fifteen minutes 'til i get to Sherbrooke
—i adore that fifteen-minute stretch down thru the jumble of
student associations, clubs, faculty offices, administration buildings, resources centres & the like;
all contained in the same red bricked, white trimmed victorian monster, multiplied threescore
on either side of the lane; all built in the early nineteen-hundreds, all acquired by the university in one of several expansion initiatives in a decade i won't bother to guess at, it doesn't matter. you don't care..

midway down the hill i stop and go sit on the verandah of one of the buildings,
the graduate studies in math offices —
cccrack that forty.
sit there with the sun JUST barely splitting the seam of the horizon feelin'
like the lyrics from a Sun Kil Moon song. nothing more or less.  
"off to a good start," says i.
MORE TO COME.. tired as **** right now but wanted to get this up here. get off my back. love A L .
Alin Jun 2015
Beware Hooray
the Cavemen are comin
jumpin up and don knock-kneed
sweepin the hill with their new harvested beard

Howdy chicky chicken leg
What’s goozin under your sweaty shirt
lookin like ma granpa
with ur baby cream breath
or is it maybe somethin else luscious
spring of intermittent discharge
making rainbows duplicate

yep gimme two too
when u come to me
oh when u come to me

cause I am a matured
lovin n **** is my blanched bird nest
neatly crowned above my head
I shall unbind it for
adorable is your lady color short pants
I bet holographic daisies growin
along the tri-d charm
of your ******
if any yeah if any

Beware Oh the cavemen
Run flat out nou
cause I shall feed you
to my auntie’s aging dreams
with the buncha hair on ur face
u look lika somethin
resembling
a man before her famine

Beware Oh the cavemen
Auntie is comin
he he
A L Davies Sep 2011
on my basement cellar shelves i keep
a buncha cans:
soups, water chestnuts.. tomato paste
some firewood & old glass.
i go there in the evenings with a drink,
heft the big axe/chop wood, kindlings.
a friend even slept down there one time
my house was full up of sleepers (drunks)
he said the sand was cold/but comforting.
i told him:
*"that's why i go down barefoot.
that dusty sand on my feet/takes me someplace else."
the sand keeps all the food nice 'n cold.
...you can store fresh vegetables down there even.
Brent Kincaid Jan 2017
Wutsa matter wit you?
Whirr you frumm?
You from summ furren country?
Cain’t you tawk better den at?
Murruhkunz doan tawk Inglush lie cat.
We talk good Inglush. We tawk da bess Inglush.
Ain’t nobody tawk better den us.
Irregardless of whut kine uh furriner you are
You could not tawk so ignernt.
It’s a insult tah good Murrukuhns tawkin lie cat.
You should be imburrst to tawk ataway in public.
Should be ashaymt uh yerself.

Yenno, peepo c’n perject thur ignernce
’N thur lack intelluhgunce so easy.
They jess open up thur mouths
’N let the dumbness fall out
’N thur it is, fer alll to see.
Yude thank they’d realize what dumshits they are
’N not let thur mouths write checks
Thur butts cain’t cover.
But, no. They’s flappin’ thur yaps an babblin’
‘Bout nothin’ at all, ’n actin’ the pure fool
Lack thur mamas din teach them nuthin.
Well, nuthin’ good, at lease.
Me, muhseff, I thank sumbuddy
Shoulda kicked thur butts
From here ta Sundee.

But, thass jess me.
I know thurs a buncha bleedin’ heart libralls out thur
That wanna let peepo get by with crap jess ‘cause
Sumbuddy is a Niger er ‘cause they’s Messcun
Er sum kinda ******* heathen er ‘sump’n,
But I thank thass jess wrong.
Peepo gotta talk good jess to respeck the flag
’N God n’ country. Or go home.
Yeah, go on back to whatever Godless place
You ’n your race ’n yer ideas is okay.
We rilly doan need ‘em here.
We’s good, God fearing’ peepo and hard working too.
So, if that ain’t you, *** on yer camel ’n ride
Back tah whurever you cumm frumm
Till you c’n tawk good Iinglush lack decent fokes.
spooky doopy Jan 2015
leaning on a rusty figure eight
my nails chip away at it
head on the tabletop lifting breaths from the center
minute single snares snap capturing the space
time reddens and swells like a bruise around me

sop up my wilted remains from the garden plots
polyglots in my sinuses whisper rhymes in sanskrit
laughin in rhythm within my toe tappin on icy paths
a buncha doughey toesies poking in the carpet
Hooflip Aug 2014
You're my best friend
Come snort a line with me
We'll have a ball
Create some memories
That we can lean on
When we're feeling small
Conquer all the gatherings
With charismatic mastery
Get plastered, acrobatic
Magic lines & rap battling
Laughing when crash the scene
And till we leave
Back to the doorway;
Pick the mat up, cop the key
Unlock it, step onto the floorspace
Step into the room and recount
All the actions
That lead us back
To the pad that we're crashed at
Mi casa,
Its your home too
You are my brother
I would die
So you could stay in view
And you would for me too
Because we're family
Like, chemically
Not by blood or marriage
But by self inflicted chemistry
And revelry
For all thats good and golden
In these moments pure
And more of them tomorrow
Come with coffee
+Cranial tours
It always was assumed
and said oh,
Time and time again
That we would
Have each other's backs
Until we're backed' a wall
By death
You stopped your chemistry
and most communication with me
Yet started speaking of me
and my like for light vacationing
Perceive me with an illness
Spread by talking with the facts wrong
Its been months,
Brother you have not seen me AT ALL
Yet say i've changed and rearranged
My Soaring for a sad crawl
You'd take a bet
That says I take a dose a day
I'd hate to see you bet your life
for you'd be throwing it away.
But I suppose it makes sense,
It's like i'm ******* dead to you
And obviously
That is where the friendship
Ends with you
Why would you treat me kind?
Im just another faceless skeleton
That tries to make connections
For the hell of it
Its getting easier to choose
The ones to stick with or stay away from
But homie me and you have been kickin it
Since like, day one.
I never thought i'd see the day come,
You preaching hypocrisy
About one of your brothers
And the subject is a BUNCHA *******
If you cared you'd take the time
To think and then approach me
Opposed to judging me
Over something you've never seen.
I heard, that you heard, that he had heard it from.
You said, that he heard, that she had heard it from.
Its ******* dumb,
Information with no form or ******* source
ANGER
ANGER
ANGER
ANGER
ANGER
Whew..
Better feels for it's upon digital paper
Perhaps it will be seen,
Perplex, inspire beautiful strangers.
Perhaps it will be laughed at,
Perhaps it helped you grow
Perhaps perplexing inspiration
Supposed to ebb and flow
From all the everything experienced
There's always more to come
More to create, more to be done
More sadness, bliss, separation.

I lost a friend today,
Or perhaps just shifted to a phase
That's sure to shift again
Come time to pass

I gained a friend today,
Or perhaps just shifted to a phase
That I hope will never change
But time will pass

I listen close
I try to learn
But hear no proper reasoning

I wanna be a better friend,
You want to get rid of me.

I lost a friend today,
Or perhaps just shifted to a phase
That's sure to shift again
Come time to pass

I gained a friend today,
Or perhaps just shifted to a phase
That I hope will never change
But time will pass
Rambling on rhythmically.
May it change for the brighter and stay shining.
Brent Kincaid Feb 2018
Hinky Jinky, Stinky Pinky
The One Percent will play.
Squirrely Shirley Hurly Burly
In the full light of day.
Hop them, bop them;
You can’t stop them.
They’re never going away.
Crying, trying, always lying,
They count on your ignorance.
Hinky Jinky, Stinky Pinky
Wham bam, thank you man.
Daffy, laffy, slappy happy.
What’s the hap? What’s the plan?

Cooked books, buncha crooks.
Loosie, goosey, where’s the noosey?
Flakey, fakey, jump in the lakey.
Take and take, oil of snake,
How much of this can good people take?
Scream and shout, let it all out
Stick it, we’ll show up and picket
You’ll try to trick it, we’ll buy you a ticket
On a rail, feathered, or off to jail.
Subliminal criminals, sentences too minimal
We’ll feel best if you and the rest must
Sell your houses and cars from behind bars.
Brent Kincaid Apr 2018
Loosey goosey, Gary Busey
Makes more sense than you!
What do you see, big kaboosie?
What would Vladdy Putin do?

Fussy wussy, presidential woosy
Tell a whole buncha more lies.
Flappy *****, big **** slappy
The best your money buys.

Choppy woppy, never stoppy
Even when caught on tape.
Shouty, pouty, tough it outy
Completely out of shape.

Fleecer, squeezer, ugely obese
Shadow of your youth
Ripoff, tipoff, always lipoff.
Incapable of truth.

Heapy cheapy, never sleepy
Won’t pay your own bills.
Brainless pain, runaway train,
All your ideas can ****.

Neego, peego, bloated ego
The little kids you scare,
Shard, pard, big tub of lard,
As attractive as your hair.
IsReaL E Summers Apr 2015
Heard from a roof top  of...
Buncha zeros and ones
My *******
heros' and nuns!

How your story is spun!
Little smigdet pinch of da' fiction
This IT SON!
OHhhhh noooo nooooe
This is the end of...
What's pinned up.

So chin up!
Eyes open!
Look deep
Close to
Where there's
Hope there's
Peace.
Even when we can't see.
this needs serious work...
But the main idea was borrowing ideas "created" by other poets to "give" back to poets. In lue of. In spite of.
Thier greatness.
Dylan May 2015
Om shanti tra-la-lace,
empty head fulla space.

Mismatched mouth and mind,
squawking every word ya find.

Buncha penny-sized pupils --
spun-out "gypsies" popping pills.

When ya finally say what ya mean,
I'll be where I was with no in between.

Om shanti tra-la-lo
pack yer patchouli and go.
George C Oct 2014
It's just a buncha **** I wish could do,
Yet with this **** strife I'm only subdued,
Clueless on what to wait on now,
Constantly a smile flipped into a frown,
I wonder what it takes to not be so bound,
Constantly punished I question what's the cause,
The fate, karma, or just God's given smiteful pause
tonylongo Apr 2020
I really wanted to express warm grattude
to the new web acquaintances I've made on here
during this trying time. Practically overnight
I got a buncha new followers as a new user, or
at least it seems like a buncha to me; then,

rather suddenly, it seems like everybody at
once stopped reading my stuff. Given the current situation,
I sincerely hope that this doesn't mean you have...
no, it's too terrible to think of, much less say.

Nevertheless, my gratitude for your recognition,
however momentary, is heartfelt and continues,
and I want you to know that I will continue to
value our association for as long as this period of
social disconnectedness lasts, after which
I will re-evaluate rationally based on a cost-benefit model.
Joking! really! of course
jeffrey robin Mar 2013
So I pushed
"Write a poem"
Thinking the **** machine was
Gonna write  a poem
And then this **** page comes up
Like I'm supposed
To write the
**** poem!
-
What the ****!
-
Well a course I could write
A ****** good poem!

But for whom

You out there!
YOU!

A buncha bozos sittin around all night
Tryin to get laid
N then beatin up on yer partner
Iffn they want out sometime?
---
Give me a **** ****** break!
/:/
I mean

Where is Shakespeare
When ya need him, right?
__

O. K.
-- here we go--
::
We are lovers let us go
Into the pure hearts' true dominion

We'll light the way for every soul
Upon the path of god's creation

We'll make love on all street corners
We will storm the palace walls

We are the masters of all that matters
The mistresses of eternal law

I in you and you in me
Our presence is eternal peace

Every man thus is saved
Every child thus is graced
////
There ya got it
One more stinking poem!

Now how do I turn
The ****  machine off!
Apostrophe's Feb 2018
I've got a lot of questions
And I've learned a lot of lessons
But the relentlessness to ask 'em
  Always keeps me guessin'
You learn things better the hard way...
Should I starve today
  and spend my money on the lottery?
Or buy a 12 pack and attack another artery
Every day it's gettin' harder for me
But it's feelin' like there's a part of me
That's startin' me to realize
things ain't really like they oughta be.
People's justification and rationalization
Keep me tuned in on a station
findin' life even more evasive.
and I find myself just wasting
all my patience on just waitin'
and thinking in contemplation
When I awaken...
Will I still wander while I wonder
And wonder while I wander
How much longer
it'll be
'til we grow strong enough to see
that what we actually believe
isn't fact
and we've been decieved
everyone will be relieved
That we just need to plant a seed
And a new garden will grow
Like it did so long ago to make today
And in our day and age
It seems that things will never change
But change today or walk the plank
Steady movin' up the ranks
Until I stopped and thought in thanks
to the conclusions I draw and then erase.
Listen to my inner dialogue it says...
Only reason we're breathin'
Is cuz while others were bleedin'
People were seein' the treason
And called together a meetin'
  To declare authority
A reason of ignoring me
A reason of exploring the seas
A reason of cuttin' down trees
where animals used to breathe and live free.
Instead we lock 'em in cages
or shoot 'em with 22 gauges
It's so outrageous
Our worth is based on our wages
We **** to get some bills
with a buncha old guy's faces
And sit back in amazement
With a smile on our face-lift
Wrote most of this when I was much younger...hence the title...enjoy angry teenage me. Somehow I remembered most of it. Lol...
jeffrey robin Mar 2013
Lazy lazy day!
( or,
Maybe it is we who are kidding ourselves !)
...
The 99% of us enslaved
To a buncha greedy ***** *******!
..
Predendin it'll all " go away!"
..
&
All we need is a non-preditory Lover!
//

//
Little child
(Of any age)
..
You still LIVE!
Wholly and completely

You still reside in a MOTHER'S  ARMS!
And HARM still should never come to you
And you should never have to be afraid
Or fear your FATE and DESTINY!
---
We are surely ONE HUMAN FAMILY!

So humane
Lovely and loving

--

You know my VOW
(It's been plainly spoken)

You have my HEART
for Eternity
...
Eye to eye  
Token for token
...
LOVE IS
FOR EVERYONE
( I'm sure  you agree
--
As surely as I know
You stand here with me)
Wk kortas Mar 2017
The pin wobbled in a manner which would tantalize another man,
But he knew, surely as he knew his own name,
Knew in the very maw of his soul,
That it would remain implacably upright.
He was right, of course, the seven-pin standing ***** as a toy soldier
In complete defiance of tenets of physics and divine mercy.
He’d been down this road before,
More times than he’d care to remember:
Some occasions of his own making, short-arming the last ball,
Having it hit the head pin too flush,
Or going Brooklyn and leaving the ten unscathed,
But equally often seemingly the victim of random fate or its like,
Where he’d the pocket just so,
With all the action you’d need or could muster,
Yet somehow the pins would bounce off the wall in patterns
Inexplicable via Newton's laws, the work of gremlins or voodoo,
Perhaps the vexatious ghost of some manual pin-setter of long ago.
He’d put together eleven straight strikes
On every lane in the house a half-dozen times,
Some nights when the boards were as giving
As a rich and doting grandmother,
Other times in sport conditions
Where no one else even sniffed two hundred
(On one such evening, he’d scored a perfect game
On the ancient shuffle-alley game tucked into a corner of the bar, Celebrating, in a manner of speaking,
By taking chunky, sad-faced Penny Marie
From the payroll office at the mill
Up against a wall in the dimly-lit alley behind the building.)

After enduring the usual consolation and confabulation,
He left the alley, walking up the hill to the old two-story on Fifth St.
Which he shared with his mother and other memories,
Though the house bore little trace of his existence, present or otherwise
(His mother had, just once, put a few of his trophies and plaques
Out on display on the mantelpiece in the parlor;
He’d insisted that she take them down forthwith.
Buncha ******* plastic and stamped tin, he’d snapped,
Don’t mean a ******* thing to no ******* body.)
He’d nodded to her on his way through to his room
(She still, out of force of habit, still waited up for him,
Part simple inertia, part hopeful belief
In the talismanic nature of the maternal)
Grunting Y’know, one of those nights in reply to her inquiry
As to how well or otherwise the evening went.
He’d undergone the usual bedtime ministrations
(An indifferent ****, the near-frenzied tooth brushing
Which failed to remove the effluvium which accompanied him home
Courtesy of bad bar pizza and Rolling Rock)
Before another evening of fitful dreams
Consisting of hazy yet glorious episodes
Which never seemed to reach fruition before the advent
Of an unwelcome and vaguely malevolent sunrise.
Elihu Barachel Mar 2016
I should be in politics, I'd tell a buncha lies
I'd lie my *** right off, I'd win the Nobel Prize
-
I'll count the votes before you vote, so I'm sure I'll win
All my campaign promises, forget they'd ever been
-
As soon as I'm in office, my cronies I'll shoe in
I'll ban all graft and greed, except for me and all my kin
blab fuckity **** **** gab
buncha tryin to be some-
thing real or whole

x-press(ion) squeezing pleads
into hypnotic hymnal
humming breathe

up my thighs
now, not numb
but tingling throes

I feel all the
nothings winking
at everything con-
tained therein

and I squirm
toward the right

where it
overflowed
Wk kortas Jun 2020
We knew the place better than we knew our homes,
Each scratch and warped spot on the bar,
Each tear and repair in the old-school upholstery
On the ageless stools,
Each story behind the bats, jerseys, boxing gloves
And the other souvenirs whose origin and the stories behind them
(A man of the world, old Pop McLafferty would say of himself,
Though the only time he’d been outside Elk County
Was a desultory two-year hitch
Spent in one of Mother Army’s more decrepit West Texas camps)
All being  of dubious authenticity;
Take those gloves, Pop would say, Got ‘em in Cuba one time.
Belonged to Hemingway, ya know.
He and the old Dodger pitcher, Hugh Casey,
They’d spend all day shooting clay pigeons
And drinking cases of Hatuey Beer 'n go home
And beat the living hell out of each other with those gloves
Until Papa’s missus couldn’t take the splintered wicker no more
,
And though we knew **** well he’d bought the gloves
At the Sally Army thrift store up in Coudersport,
We kept our own counsel,
As we’d bent elbows and spewed ******* there
Since we were old enough to drink
(Earlier, in fact, as we ran with Timmy McLafferty,
Who later inherited the place,
The largesse of death being the only way
He’d ever have the wherewithal to own a bar)
And the place remained a constant
Through all those things we’d failed or had failed us
(Girlfriends, wives, parents, even our spots on the line
Once the Montmorenci shut down.)

This night, then, was no different than most,
The normal rituals being observed,
Most of them at the good Timmy’s expense,
As his positions both behind the bar
And in the cosmic order mandated such,
This particular evening the determination having been made
By unanimous ballot that Timmy had never, in fact, been kissed
(Not as preposterous a notion as one might think,
As he had made the transition from “hefty” to “fat *******”
Quite some time ago.)
He’d taken our potshots with the good-natured stoicism
That were part and parcel of his character and his role,
Until he piped up—C’mon fellas, I was engaged at one point.
We’d responded with any number of speculative notions
As to said fiancée’s deficiencies and possible species,
Until Timmy said, with borderline belligerence,
Look, I’ll show you a picture,
At which point he produced a creased three-by-five snapshot
Of a blonde who looked very much like a 1980’s –issue Ellen Foley,
Thus occasioning speculative comparisons
Between Tommy and Meat Loaf,
With the subsequent rumination
As to what this poor girl would have tasted
Had she stuck her tongue down Tommy’s throat
In Paradise-By-The-Dashboard-Light fashion
(The consensus being Subway BLT, varied flavors of Cheetos,
And three-hour old Tullamore Dew.)
We’d expected, naturally, that Tommy would laugh along with us,
But he slammed a tray of glasses down on the bar with such force
That one or two of the glasses liberated themselves
And shattered noisily.
He’d gazed at us with the pure, holy fury
Which usually proceeds the mother of all riot acts,
But he apparently decided that there were pearls and swine
And there was no sense mixing the two.
Why should I waste any more time on you sonsofbitches,
Buncha ******* can’t see past the bottom of your glasses anyhow
,
And with that he stalked into the back,
Ostensibly to grab mixers or pretzels
Or some **** thing, and we sat still as church mice for a moment,
Until someone looked at the TV, and said ******* Sixers,
All upside and never deliverin’ the goods
,
and we nodded in agreement in the manner of those
Who do not see, hear, or say anything untoward.
M Dec 2018
Funny how small the world is when it's not
Someone for each and everyone it seems
Until I reached my name, so I thought
The trans girl I attend school with exists only in my dreams
Surrounded by lovely people as well as some not so lovely
Various identities and orientations crossin' over
Two years nearly like this, and someone like me I've yet to see
Chance encounters in this full, desolate land are four-leaf clovers
Hard not to lament loneliness even when friends are there
Easy to force a smile and laugh as well as tell white lies
Sometimes make me feel a skosh needy, but I don't care
I stay wishin' for someone to gravitate towards to field my cries
Pipe down and keep dreamin', kid
Sit right back down and accept your fate
Too awkward, bad at first impressions, of that you won't get rid
You won't meet no girl like you, ain't that great?
If I were to meet my match, I'd be elated
The yin to my yang, the bullet to my gun
Give the F-word, hummingbird to sadness; like a balloon, I'd inflate
The good kind of mess; give dysfunction its 'fun'
I'd treat you like the lady you are
We'd sound similar when complimentin' ourselves, we homophones
Beat your face up and do the same to the ignorant, no matter how far
We'd have ourselves a gay ol' time, unlike a buncha homophobes
But above all else, I'd want to be there for you
Validate you and offer support whenever you deem it necessary
I want to be the best friend I can through and through
Do whatever it takes, doesn't matter how arbitrary
Michael Marchese Jan 2022
The present tense
You are
She was
My undoing
With you though
The here and now
Feels like renewing
My letters contained in this green little box
Remain sealed
And sequestered
In restlessness locks
And I festered
Transfixed upon
Dissonant clocks
Buncha’ rocks
It all rots
And returns to the dirt
Without worth
After birth
Ever bound to the Aerth
sage eugene zumr Oct 2018
left for dead
im stuck inside my head
tryna chase the bred
im fed up
with the way i live
cause i know
that what i give
people sittin undertoe
will always sift through
the ashes of a ghost
and that makes me sick
so when you
call upon the shift
just show what i did
for those that
stick in the mud
like a car in a rut
yall bleed the most
gotta broken line
think the brakes
are toast dont
take a ride when you
get released  
or youll be
back within their roaps
yea sat beside a criminal
thinkin im subliminal
im in the bowl their smokin
and its fishin for a co-page
another day lookin
like im goin way down
deep inside the cut
and ill never get the bust
money taken by a pair of cuffs
that a buncha *******
that they love ill never get caught
linell stay taught
while its taunt
inside the shot
when the cops
place me in that shop
ill be a body dropped off
on the lot
Folie Sep 2020
Gold can hold its weight but you can’t hold your own
Fools coin in your purse, I think I, found who cast the first stone
Ten years older and you still don’t live on your own

Bottomless cup but you never filled it
Take your emotions and, bottle up
I hope you, “bottoms up” till you lose feeling
Cheap whisky made you  warm up
Bet I got you thinkin as if it matters anymore, boy you’re sweatin’

Spilt your cup, I got you pouring
Most the time this sites annoying, buncha pent emotion placed aside like a toy, that barrel of feelings is pulsing
The slump ain’t the issue, just don’t stay it, correct your posture and keep pushing off the pavement, It’s time I dip, my toll is your time and thank you for the payment
Hey you, don’t turn around, boi Vulture’s keeping an 👁 on you from SoundCloud 😂
Exosphere Apr 2021
I was startled out of my body twice last night
twice!!
I floated there, momentarily weightless
before being snapped back in
it was very rude

the second time I was flashed the gateways
vividly
like a smack in the brain
wake up ya zombie!
I was all, Jesus Christ! I hear you!
lemme go back to sleep!
some of us didn’t pick up a buncha worshippers and we have to work for a living!
**** esoteric trust fund kids

— The End —