"century" poems
That workaholic lady who's always on call,
keeping up with the market fall.
That newly married lady with chunky red bangles,
returning to her father's big castles.
That person who's scared to get lapse,
so stays active on the google maps.
That person who swings like a kid at the back door,
Or the one who perform calisthenics on an empty floor.
That next door girl with a red lipstick,
flicking her shinny hair & gossiping with her clique,
That dreamer gazing outside the window,
That overworked soul dozing on his elbow.
That 21st century kid,
listening to Eminem & playing video games.
Or That 90’s kid,
listening to Jenga Boys & playing outdoor games.
That banker with a big fat stomach,
filled with his beautiful wife’s love.
That lady who eats like a thief,
in her big fat bag hiding a beef.
That old man who can’t stand Bombay's winding turns.
That granny spotting & criticing every fashion trends.
That man who has Raju Rastogi’s concerns,
thinking & chanting for earns & returns.
Those kids who believe their job is to fill the voids in a battlefield,
in the still crowd surpassing like electrons into a magnetic field.
That lady sitting under cold seat like a glacial,
than standing with 7kgs in a crowded central,
& tryna stay sane listening to George Michael.
That geek who switchs from Linkedin to Arjun Reddy,
when the masses flee into the scenery.
That trader crunching numbers so rapidly,
when the stock prices go down hourly.
That person on the last seat,
diagressing from work & gazing around,
soaking in her pashmina, with a career newfound.
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 1:35 AM UTC
Gliding deftly along the city street
rolling quick and constantly
onward to some unknown scene,
some backward park in the nighttime
smoke curling from these
parted lips, moist and inviting
calling me somewhere I've never seen.
New day, new night
new feelings, rage in delight
fill me with your hilarious entropy,
knock my quarks into the next century,
will you please?
Now you're smoking the pipe and all at once you are free
between you and me, this smoke is thicker and sticks
like glue,
wispy and dreamy and the world spins and calls Toltec
telephone company can't pay me for all those calls collected
and rendered obsolete
Sun god dead as that silly calendar meme
Amaterasu,
and Imma tell you
these ladies in the picnic table
buried alive for boxed lunch and god's brunch
Jesus ******* Christ
and a indelible roster of good guys,
to which we all must strive to live and die
behind,
never moving forward
chasing our tails like a sick dog
under the jasmine runner between the decades-old tanbark
imported from overseas
dead trees
dead canine
and oh isn't it just divine?
You see it, pretty lady.
I can see it hiding behind your eyes
the things you don't tell the others because you're afraid
if they found out,
you'd be crucified.
Well honey I hate to inform,
With KGB efficiency that these love-a-dumbs
aint Methuselah,
they'll be dead!
long before your flood of tears tears me from the land
ballistas me across the great expanse to some strange Ararat
of the eastern seaboard,
or maybe wash me deep along the 80
into the desert sands and tiles
on a leaky cell phone screen
desperately trying to dial home on low battery,
realizing all this was one big deferred dream,
baking in the sun and shriveling
oh well, back to the grindstone-- all those lies plucked your nose,
gotta cut it back to size,
'else your soul it'll outgrow
Don't worry honey bee
It hasn't happened to me,
and We know with calcuable mathematical truth
that it'll never happen to you.
Jun 26, 2018
Jun 26, 2018 at 9:50 PM UTC
BLESSED be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A ****** arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages --
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
HaIf dead at the top.
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the
sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers
he called them once.
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke
have travelled there.
Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had
dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his
mind,
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a
tree,
That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen-
tury after century,
Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;
And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a
dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its
farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its
theme;
Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnani-
mity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual
fire.
III
The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.
IV
Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.
37k
All of the dance moms are on their iPhones-
All I have is my notebook.
Pen scratching on paper, I am...
Old school.
An island of last century
In a sea of modern marvels of technology.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 2:20 PM UTC
Brick
By
Brick
A house is built
Hour
By
Hour
The house becomes a home
Day
By
Day
The home turns into memories
Year
By
Year
The memories turn into people
Century
By
Century
The people turn into stories
Story
By
Story
Stories turn into legends
Legend
After
Legend
History is changed
Piece
By
Piece
Lives are changed
Person
By
Person
Love is spread
One Love
After
Another
Bricks are purchased
That build houses
That turn into homes
That create memories
That turn into people
That turn into stories
That turn into legends
That change history
And it all started with
Just. One. Brick.
Mar 16, 2018
Mar 16, 2018 at 10:28 PM UTC
He says I should do this
Society usually agrees
There's only so much a girl can do
Do I have anything to prove?
I can't "compare" with other men
Society says they're "more advantaged"
Where does this leave me?
Unable to prove my capability?
The thing with sexism is,
despite living in the 21st century,
some people are closed-minded as can be...
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 6:50 AM UTC
Ah the perfect boy
Mushy and gushy, all human like, with normal human skin, and smile
Scratch that
Heavy body armor, brandishing a sword, born in the mid 15th century
Hmmm, no
Aluminim for hair, copper in his head, lack of understanding of any type of human emotions
That's not right, no
How about
Scales?
Not possible
Gills?
Smells fishy
A being of pure light energy?
Sigh, beyond my comprehension
I guess I'll just get
A pet rock
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 9:07 PM UTC
kiss me with mango sherbet
in your mouth and sticky
orange tinted lips
these car tires are growing old
but I am young with three
dimples on my face
callouses on my fingertips
of my left hand
stop with the
'you're scared'
in which century does
refusal amount to fear
liberation by the pen drawings
on my hand consumes me
individuality is not dead I
am here
with fiery intent occasionally lost in
a girly figure with a small
waist and awkward ankles
don't dance alone dance a soliloquy
like the bruise on my neck
(labors of love are not
merely towards humans)
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 11:12 PM UTC
From Alan Lomax to the commercial art and now the money machine.
At the turn of the century; when sound recording 1st became available to the masses, recording a song was an opportunity for folk to reach out; and tell the world something up front and personal.
It meant that people were able to put themselves on “The record” A way of leaving a permanent audio statement, an epitaph, an audio sound bite immortalising ~ life, mood, emotion captured and bottled for all eternity.
(A medium that conveyed messages from artists and storytellers of all kinds)
A recording was also a great addition to "The family album" something more tangible, a window to a real person, with a real life, a message and a point of view; a legacy, a blast from the past.
Few people expected sound prints to be re-designed, homogenised, formulated, copied, repackaged and that art and the message would be played over and over again by new artists in the form of "cover music" or that the style of the messages would become secularized, seperated into distinctive groups, or constrained by an elite clique or commercial genre.
Labelling and streamlining art & music mostly benefits the commercial art & music industry; and no longer the artists and creators.
I've no problem with good business, or the multi-billion pound industrys that have gained commercial success.
However the process of mass homogenisation, product synthesis, marketing, streamlining and then packaging fashion, sound and synthetic culture to sell a product, leaves very little room for creative people to just be creative.
A medium originally open to many for self expression, a historical record, an archive, a voice, a personal message;
Is now just a vehicle for advertising and perpetuating a genre of nonsense, so much so that there is now more white noise immortalised than messages.
To re-cap ~ I Think that creativity and expressionism; like story telling conveys moods and messages from the present and past!
Artists and musicians should have the opportunity to create and produce more information than they copy; thus creating a richer more colourful tapestry, whilst not devaluing the message of their predecessors!
Purcy Flaherty.
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 10:38 AM UTC
a thousand brilliant lies
(Hafiz, Iran 1320-1389); (L.F.P., USA 20~21st century)
- Hafez - - Left Foot Poet-
“I have a if only, in my meager possess,
thousand brilliant lies, but one lie when easy asked
For the question: the simplest damning of,
How are you? are you generally happy?
I have a what is god you ask,
thousand brilliant lies. no lies required,
For the question: many answers upon my face visible,
What is God? unsure if any worthy of believing
If you think that the 8 centuries separate us, yet
Truth can be known, you lie; we poets - you, I, all believe
From words in the divinity of words
If you think that the a thousand brilliant sparkles
Sun and the Ocean, when Sun loves the Ocean,
Can pass through that each one a poem passing,
tiny opening Called my mouth, my wide eyes,
the mouth, uttering a Cohen's hallelujah
O someone should So we gleam, mirthing in glorious
start laughing! and gleeful delight at ourselves
Someone should start for your brilliant happy lies easily
wildly Laughing Now!"
unravel into a thousand laughs
Jun 21, 2018
Jun 21, 2018 at 2:30 PM UTC
ladies and gentlemen this little girl
with the good teeth and small important *******
(is it the Frolic or the Century whirl?
ones memory indignantly protests)
this little dancer with the tightened eyes
crisp ogling shoulders and the ripe quite too
large lips always clenched faintly,wishes you
with all her fragile might to not surmise
she dreamed one afternoon
….or maybe read?
of time a when the beautiful most of her
(this here and This, do you get me?)
will maybe dance and maybe sing and be
absitively posolutely dead,
like Coney Island in winter
15k
I rolled out of bed
to start my day,
but the power was off
my all electric home,
as still as a grave.
No coffee, or toast.
The refrigerator not cold,
the freezer started dripping
the contents soon to spoil.
No computer, no cell phone service!
I began sweating profusely,
no air conditioning to cool me.
Not even a TV Emergency Broadcast Alert,
to release this uneasy feeling of topsy-turvy .
I drove into town seeking a pay phone,
with not a single one to be found,
gone the way of the dinosaurs,
extinct now too I assumed.
My old truck had no computer chips,
most cars did and were dead in their tracks.
I needed gas but the gas station pumps
electric computer driven, all DOA to boot.
The Nations electric grid had crashed,
blacked out, stone cold dead everywhere.
All heavenly satellites blacked out, expired.
Everything computer related (and
that is about everything), had ceased
to function as had the electronic reliant
world we had created.
The street throngs of dazed people walked
around like zombies, clutching blacked out
dead computer devices, knowing not what to do.
Not even talking, forgotten I guess how to do that too.
As dependently defectively programmed as the useless
devices in their hands.
In a panic I did awake finding that
this scary dream world was indeed all fake,
a nightmare of fearful unconscious thinking.
My electric clock was still churning,
It's music alarm blaring,
birds outside still singing,
my cell phone started ringing,
it was merely another Robot call,
Welcoming me back to the 21 century.
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 10:51 PM UTC
You do the math and I'll provide the irrationals,
as I tend to cling to panic in the asymmetry of life.
In this Twenty-First century women still suffer
from laws streaming out of councils of men.
These are not self-stabbing heroines,
they do not ask the heavy deluge of derision.
They are faced with laws stemming from an abbatoir,
from men who wish to usurp the birthright.
Men who have become strangers to their own mothers,
men whose ***** dispense a fouled milk,
men who deserve an **** ultrasound colonoscopy.
So, I beg you to balance the inequality of the equation,
gather our sisters in this non-Euclidean space:
this is one we solve by inspection!
May 5, 2012
May 5, 2012 at 10:57 PM UTC
huh, what time is it?
phone slips back into pocket
huh, what time is it?
a bear with regret
making its bold confessions
from behind a meme
life in the future:
computer in my glasses
yet still no jetpacks
ancestors hunted
only ate what they could ****
now we have WalMart
flowers were once wild
bananas used to have seeds
- how we shape the world
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
Feel the tide.
I am the ship.
I am the captain.
The ocean is a savage
the way it pulls my body,
slinging me around like i'm weightless.
I will not surrender to this beast.
The waves mean nothing to me.
I've been fighting this savage ocean for a century.
100 years of getting carried away across these waters.
Isolation is my home.
It's all I know.
I brought this on myself.
I ran away from land and into the water,
unknowing of the horror it holds.
But I will not surrender
I am the ship.
I will not kiss the ocean goodnight.
I will not fight.
I will float on until the day comes I greet the sea.
My lungs will sting and my head will rush.
Leave my body in isolation.
Let it be a peace offering.
So the ocean wouldn't have to carry away another ship that day.
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 10:12 PM UTC
Money Talks
and what it said back then on the railway bridge
at Bloomfield Road (no longer there of course)
was "You can spare me – it means only one less
penny ice lolly from the corner shop !" (no longer
there of course) and the train will make me huge
(steam no longer here of course) and the others
will laugh and cheer as you scramble down to
the line place me centred and climb back up
here again before the train shoots through to
Central Station (no longer there of course).
Gigantic copper-coloured disc and this recall.
Still talking half a century after.
(c) C J Heyworth August 2014
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 12:17 PM UTC
What puts a smile on my face
is a smile on yours
When we sit and talk
and your problems you pour
I like you even more
when the same you do for me
When you say, "I understand,"
you're the friend of the century
I welcome your presence
because every moment counts
Time with you is like love
taken in large amounts
There's no such thing as too close
You never stray too far
What I really like about ya
is that you know who you are
You never spend your time
trying to convince others
that you are nice and kind
You just let them discover
We know where we stand
Outsiders need not apply
They see not what I do
when looking at your eyes
We connect on a level
different than most
You're my constant guest
I'm proud to be your host
You and me together
is so uncomparable;
what dreams are made of
or a love parable
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
I sit and try and be a lotus
after killing the third fly of the evening
with a pocket book of recipes and a
thirty centimetre ruler stolen
from bathroom **** measuring contests to our knees.
Young professionals tread these boards
and I watch, trying to paint them lotus.
I listen and learn like I was told to do
then clock watch, mop, cycle home to you;
I am still trying to be a lotus
even in wet shoes and no socks.
With less than five-hundred pounds to my various names,
an office-chair-cum-clothes-horse, eight USB charging ports
and a future that stretches to Sunday’s last reluctant second,
I am sitting, trying to be lotus figuring out the professional path
David Attenborough heard in his gentleman’s class: that son of a-
- I walked into an army recruitment vault with dreams of being Gulliver,
though was asked to leave out the cat flap cathedral door back into war
as they’d got their laugh and didn’t applaud.
Perhaps I should’ve been better at maths
where apparently a career can be predicted on a scatter graph,
and the pigeons of today were the pigeons of next year and the months that’ll follow the century after that.
I am still trying to figure out the hoo-ha of ************
and ring fingers and collar sizes and the inner circles
of hyenas when the winter solstice splits the seasons.
There is no reason for this lotus procrastination
when what’s there to live for but a crooked world
and one bandage left.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 2:18 PM UTC
I was brought into this house
Ordered from the local furniture shop
Made to order according to specifications
I am a wingback,
Upholstered in full-grain leather
True to my rich heritage
I was placed in the library
Amongst the illustrious works of famous writers
Half- a - century have passed, providing support
To the backbone of the family
Although tired, he finds solace in my cozy embrace
I give him my wings to fly into the world of literature
Cervantes, Bunyan, Bacon, Goehte, Dostoevsky, Chekov, Tolstoy
Some of the names from the illustrious collection
Not all were privileged to have a seat here
He was transported to each era, savoring the rich legacy
Of literature down the centuries
I was privy to the mind-boggling debates
Which he conducted with himself
Trying to reason each work of literature
A mere wingback rose to be a companion
Providing sturdy support on the mahogany legs
One fine day the reading session ended in deep slumber
Five decades of bonding and companionship came to an end
Now, I stand here, forlorn, at the corner of the library
Reminiscing the reading sessions, and siesta
The wingback does not have the wings to fly away from this bond
© Amitav (Radiance)
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 2:35 PM UTC
My easel, has been asleep
for a while, like a whale
on the lost deep seas
finding a prey
to victimise
to sate the belly full.
Your easel, sees in my eyes
the robbers on the blink
of an unruly end
finding recognition
in social media
to favor ego
to sate the belly full.
Your easel, is a mellow fine lens
Hands in line holding a gun
set a trigger, to silence the crowds
the doom in the public cruise
trollers and vipers with wipers
to sate the belly full
What have we come to dear friend?
we seek fame and lose our self
to the shadows of the masses
who denude our dignity
to gain their sanity
to sate the belly full
What have we come to dear friend?
in the spaces of the contours between
dehumanised by the social media
the medium of the century voice
the armageddon of currency
that sate to fill it's belly
Aug 25, 2016
Aug 25, 2016 at 1:45 PM UTC
I have been going to the track for so
long that
all the employees know
me,
and now with winter here
it's dark before the last
race.
as I walk to the parking lot
the valet recognizes my
slouching gait
and before I reach him
my car is waiting for me,
lights on, engine warm.
the other patrons
(still waiting)
ask,
"who the hell is that
guy?"
I slip the valet a
tip, the size depending upon the
luck of the
day (and my luck has been amazingly
good lately)
and I then am in the machine and out on
the street
as the horses break
from the gate.
I drive east down Century Blvd.
turning on the radio to get the result of that
last race.
at first the announcer is concerned only with
bad weather and poor freeway
conditions.
we are old friends: I have listened to his
voice for decades but,
of course, the time will finally come
when neither one of us will need to
clip our toenails or
heed the complaints of our
women any longer.
meanwhile, there is a certain rhythm
to the essentials that now need
attending to.
I light my cigarette
check the dashboard
adjust the seat and
weave between a Volks and a Fiat.
as flecks of rain spatter the
windshield
I decide not to die just
yet:
this good life just smells too
sweet.
9k
I log into the network of my self-esteem,
To see the hearts and the wows and the laughs flooding in.
A simple 'like' wouldn’t cut it anymore
‘Likes’ were so 2010, even 2010 was bored.
‘Cause that’s the zeitgeist of the age, you see,
A tendency to wear hearts on sleeves.
Loves and kisses are a dime a dozen,
With a million friends and followers double.
National debates and social justice petitions,
Real crises, distorted renditions.
High definition photos of disaster zones
Flash up against cat videos on every smart phone.
Snapchat filters do not lie,
Just tell a story of hours gone by;
Selecting the perfect background, the ideal shade
To express love on the dozen’th date.
But that’s the zeitgeist of the century,
A tendency to wear hearts on sleeves.
To document in minute detail, with extensive pictorial evidence
Clockwork days of humdrum nonchalance.
And perhaps the generation that came before
Would call it vanity, vainglory, or something more.
But it ain’t like they were without their sins,
We didn’t invent tabloid columnists.
And now that we are at the end,
Let me sign off with this request:
Like, comment, and share your love
Let your heart fall out of your shirt cuff.
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 1:53 AM UTC