"cheapened" poems
my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 1:04 PM UTC
like yours
if you'll reciprocate
follow you
if you'll follow me
repost mine
repost yours
pump up those
double discount
quantitative adulations
making everything here,
cheapened and discounted
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...
when first we practice to deceive.”
standalone
on your merits own
the only way to stand
upright
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 7:49 AM UTC
As this world wretches behind the piles of our institutional bones, I turn to look the other way.
When the beggars graze my pant leg, I don't stop mid stride and feign over their disparity,
For gaining the holy marksmen’s approval. When Judas kissed sanctity’s cheek beside the frames of broken-hearted men, I shook the feeling from my sleeve.
And I no longer feel guilt, shame,
Out of mere cerebral obligation.
So, have me for a worthless sinner. I will fall to the dust before I bring myself to stand beside the husks of humanity that so many have become; spewing their filth on unfortunate blindfolded men, expecting me to follow suit.
Well, **** off, kindly.
I’m living for the god that answers to no titles, and parsonages none of these black suited scumbags. I’m living for the god that inspires harmony, and lifts my fingers to dance for liberation, and pleasure, and hopeless longing. I’m living for the god of progress who shakes pieces of enlightenment from his gray beard, and swallows up the offerings of his every wounded child.
I’m living for the god of no religion,
Never saying
“God,”
For this name is tainted by old customs.
Cheapened by the misguided nature of man.
May 29, 2012
May 29, 2012 at 1:15 AM UTC
*break
astonishment at perception
of
a third-world child making it
up that totem-pole
amidst paltry conditions
even
beyond the half-way mark*
1.
a standing man
in silent message
and the woman in red
with thin-sling shoulder-bag
holding lipstick, weekly-ticket and purse
oh, how she frightens honchos out their skull
draped round her sister's head
shroud eternal
coughing
sore
2.
grannies recount lively griot-tales
where hope is never barren
young boys play in swamped dirt-trails
drawing absent father-figures in the sand
the wind has carried them off to mines
deep in the crust of earth's ire
adolescent future sits on labour-farms
where keen spirit is dulled with worthless hops
keeps the sly farmer happy
and he tells them the fruit is free
yet they've already paid for it
manifold
when she reaches twenty
she will have at least two kids
whose lives lie in the granny's luxury
while she runs off to the golden city-lites
to jump through higher hoops
for ****** spoils
all cheapened by long-term neglect
3.
there lies hope
unlost
in every girl-child
who goes to school
who finds encouragement
from words kindly given
if but from a stranger
*no hand-me-outs
no forlorn begging*
she...
the empowered mother of boys
will
help them to grow
into young men
of such sensibility
as to keep their hands
to deeds of honour
who, in turn
become fine fathers to daughters
they love and cherish
raise to be
luminary
*each step up
from that totem-pole
such a steep climb
strengthens invisible wings
and unworldly rewards
and when final rung is reached
heralds
untainted take-offffffff*......
S T, 27 aug
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 11:01 AM UTC
How horrible the plot
the hem, the haw
of the incessantly violent
torture ****
How sad the politic
the row, the scorn
the media howl, the noise
the storm
We are drifting in a sea
of bobble head puppets
backstabbing, mass murdering
mask-faced tyrants
and we are loosing the battle
before it's even begun
So go ahead now
and trade in your votes
sell off your rights
buy a backfiring gun
Because nothing is worse
than trying to reverse evolution
and you can't crawl back
into the womb of your Mother
once you've destroyed
the primordial ooze
of creation's lubrication
for a dollar and a cheapened dream's
inflation
Jan 11, 2017
Jan 11, 2017 at 5:08 PM UTC
Who counted hours out of the sky
And clipped the ends off?
Who quantified
Existence?
Who cheapened the flights of the sun and the moon
And put limits on time
Trapping limitless eyes?
Each day
Is one thousand days and each hour
Is one thousand hours, and
Years pass in seconds
While seconds last lifetimes
Sometimes
But my calendar
Has no capacity for this.
A moment
Lasts as long
As the glow lingers
When it's gone
And all the while
The clocks tick on,
I maintain whoever measured
The day
Was wrong.
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
*I think about ***
I think
about ***
It's that kind of thing you're not supposed to think about
but everyone already expects that you do
It's the thing you hear in whispers
and shouts
which people mask with humor.
It's touch magnified
amplified
yet lately
cheapened.
I think about ***
not the *** of two hot bodies
mixing their sweat
but the *** of exploration
knowing everything about the other person
hands moving slowly
in pitter patters
sifting carefully through limbs and bedsheets.
Incidentally,
there are melanin filled marks all over my body
something I inherited from my mother
on bored quiet days
I wonder
if anybody
someday
somewhere
will knead through all my folds
and count
each
one.
I think about ***
..how another's arms
and fingers feel
tracing lines and curves
hands following the rise and fall
chests beating to the quiet rhythms of exhaled breaths
..how a kiss feels with lips closed
because tongues are disgusting alien creatures
I don't want to think about
(which is kind of funny I guess because *** has that other stranger 'alien')
Incidentally,
my sketch pad smells of oil pastels
my journal's almost filled
I have a math exam next week
a biology quiz tomorrow
I'd sure love some chocolate
ice cream maybe?
I think about ***
but not
too much.
Aug 25, 2011
Aug 25, 2011 at 6:27 AM UTC
this shall be:
this shall be
my last poem of the year,
two thousand and thirteen,
with the muses' permission.
a fitting one as well,
for the words,
come easy,
like so many did this
annus mirabilis, year of wonders.
firm I believe,
words are living tools,
constantly being reshaped,
fitted to the occasion.
care must me taken,
words hurt when wasted, abused,
or used in contravention to the creator's
intentioned purpose of intended good.
so when a brother, a poet-man
hits the nailhead, words writ,
encapsulating an emo shared,
this reserves, a poem-celebration!
lines between humans unseen,
somehow too easy, rightly crossed,
guards dropped, secrets exposure,
with the ease of feeling no discomfiture.
yes, this is the Internet age,
sharing revelations often cheapened,
boundaries collapse,
when no consideration given.
when there is no skin, no eye-glance
real-exchanged, no feeling, no voice,
casual, to do, easy to say,
what is the risk,
what could be the casualty
of this causality?
the risk is fearsome.
so when the venture is for the better,
what matter the absence of the physicality,
the tears and hugs imagined
as good as any non-virtual,
but in the coming year,
this I swear:
I will be, I will be becoming, I will become you,
unto you, for as was written, so shall it be,
for as was written, it will become,
a beautiful first, a first re-union,
that will be.
*this notion so pleasing,
yet inherent contradictory,
aye, there's the rub,*
a first re-union of the unmet,
*to mark this three hundred and sixty fifth day,
the creator bequeathed me these prayer words
most easily, most faithfully,
as a blessing for all of us.*
Dec. 31, 2013
3:54 pm.
NYC
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 4:15 PM UTC
Sunny day's may be sunny
Yet inside always so dark.
Cars all parked
Like rows to chapels lonesome way's!!!
Deleterious,
Nothing hilarious,
For thy eyes turn unfazed!!!
A deluge of no accomplishments
All walls stand to fail,
All ceiling's to crumble
No more derogatory jails!!!!!
Despondency roaming the brick street of the old
No desposters
No more voters to trade papers
For young and who they mold....
Thine denizen of thy own class
Doth thou passeth the bill of health?
Art thou truly alive?
Canst thou SAVETH thyself?
Think not that thou art free,
Thou eateth
Thineself meets thine own selfish needs!!!!
Thyself shoots bullets of steel
And steal cheapened goods
Whilst small holes in thee hit and bleedeth!!!!
Thy idols no longer stand
Clothes bought by daddy
From his first of the month paycheck
Colored in crayon!!!!
Thou followeth not even thy own commands.....
Is thy love didadic?
Of archaic to history's lesson's?
Art thou to short on preaching?
Thy words begin to lessen.... .
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 10:50 AM UTC
A screaming pierces the serenity of the river valley.
Overturned wreck of a car and splattered, shattered, scattered glass.
A fresh-cut gouge in the dirt embankment where he clipped it
and in retaliation it flipped him on his roof.
He staggers from the chaos
moaning not from pain, but from the Jaeger, Keystone, and regret
of totaling his mother's car.
He flees the scene with his homies, his fellow drunken cronies
and the witnesses are left behind, scratching heads and raising brows.
I among them contemplate the carnage
and I try remembering a different time, ten years ago or so...
This place used to be so beautiful
before the partiers and potheads and Varrio Locos took it over.
Shallow waters filled with algae drifts and interspersed with boulder bridges.
Sandy beaches, nature trails, wild grapes, and fishing holes.
The last free-flowing, undammed, undamned river in the state...
Now it's bloated with beer and blood and bad decisions.
Not a bare rock face remains, each one caked up in graffiti makeup.
And the air, once frequented by the heady scent of sycamore
is far too thick with marijuana anymore.
Santa Margarita, choking on smoke and dope and disrespect,
once my heart and home and refuge, now and forever a cheapened wasteland.
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 1:11 AM UTC
The wheat yellowed, the wind chipped and chipped
until the wheat lay cheapened in broken mass;
I steered my tanned corpse through the scattered wheat.
I came to the well.
Instead of dropping a coin,
I tore a stitch and threw it into the blackness.
Instead of making a wish,
I cleared my flattering secrets from my throat and yelled.
The yell echoed downward,
bouncing off grandmother stones,
until it richocheted upward
only to have the wind carry it away like a swarm of lies.
I watched my secrets yellow like an ancient photograph,
I felt nostalgia chip and chip away,
clearing the spillway for fresh pain.
I spread my arms, a self-crucifixion,
a savior of no use.
When cruel regret and cruel change
finished with me,
I stared at the bluebird flying overhead,
just beyond him a cloudless sky.
Joy is for the living,
myself I'm kidding,
I close my eyes,
and
I'm carried away.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 5:33 PM UTC
After some time,
You know that
They don't
They can't
Understand
That scars like these...
They don't go away
They don't fade
They come knocking
At midnight to tell you
About how they've
Festered for so long
Even after, you talk them out
Resolve them, lay them to sleep
They revisit you, dragging you back
To memories best forgotten
Touches burnt on your skin
Half-remembered words,
Hateful, disgusted expressions
Cheapened expressions
That make your soul unclean
Ordinary, everyday people
Could never understand
Why you need to look away
Fidget so much, the hidden
Violence with which you **** back
When someone touches
Upon such sensitive issues
Maybe you talk it over with them
Once, perhaps, and then they think
That it is gone, it is laid to rest
But what they fail to realise
Is that it comes back, creeping
Crawling, taking you over again
They'll turn away, disgusted
Because they don't know the
Impacts of long-term exposure
To slow poisoning of heart, veins, lungs
And they'll turn away
Repulsed, disinterested
When you come crying
Begging for some help
Some solitude
Because you can never
Make them feel
The pent-up emotions
Over a decade
The unseen scars
These little things
Have left you with
They will not see
The confusing mixed
Messages being sent
By those other people
They will not understand
That you're not looking
For something you've
Lost, right there,
Sitting on the ground,
Almost helplessly,
On your knees
In fact, you're looking
For something
That was never yours
To have in the first place
(*peace, solitude,
no more loneliness,
no more emptiness*)
Something
you have
(never had)
Permanently
Lost
Dec 29, 2012
Dec 29, 2012 at 1:21 PM UTC
Consider poetry
& all of its complicated forms.
Then strip it
of all rules and restrictions.
Now, consider the subject matter.
Free verse
would not be free enough
for the words I would choose
to describe
what I would like to do to you.
Maybe these types of instincts
weren't meant to be cheapened
with velvety phrasing
& sumptuous language.
You see,
I have this hypothesis
that poetry
would be just as effective
translated into raw action.
*(They really should have
shipped me off
to the nunnery
when they had the chance.)*
But they sent me to college instead—
where I learned
how to properly test
my hypotheses.
**Hot **** do I love research.**
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 3:30 PM UTC
*The dullest of backgrounds
In the unimaginative shape of cheap and cheapened unpainted wallpaper
Gives even this, the palest of pale faces, a colour
Unfortunately, a blue and purple vein occasioned twinge,
Does little to flatter smooth foreheads and tight jaws
Fortunately, boundless space and air thick with smothered apprehension
Give plentiful reflection potential for the last lazed rays that have wandered,
waning, through a harsh window open to drain the space more than fill it
Until, upon finding wet blue upon dry white
A frivolous rainbow flickers in the classic tear
On the perfect cheek between this smooth forehead and tightish jaw
Below the eye, one tiny, flickering, frivolous rainbow
For no one to see*
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 3:44 PM UTC
I hear they hoard Picasso’s like diamonds.
Excess is common—
escargot at a diner, Parisian no more,
cheapened slime beneath
industrial grade lighting.
Women
drawn and quartered, all cut up,
chaos-con-cube
hung from the wall of some
split-level apartment
where I hear a man
hanged himself
(and his children might, too*)
Their bitterness
licks at the paint
in ordinary strokes
driving down the value of,
what once was,
a masterpiece.
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 5:22 PM UTC
Falling with shoe laces undone,
Only whispers, the quietness amidst grandiosity, majesty life beyond me
The tragedy is, I am melancholy, the family
Who don't know quiet, they judge often, they
Need control over each other, competition is so powerful
No silence, so love cannot grow, it is cheapened by talk, talking, exhchange, The children crave approval
The parents crave limitless pride,
Everyone is disappointed, the gift merits more control
The mountain is not of character, rather it is God, only understood
Amidst the silence
I can feel the poem in my forehead
Stop editing, pull it out of you
Ermine dire Sanctus, Jesus burning in cackling solidarity tainted , save me, I surrender, take it, tear off the sarcasm, show me your light, your beauty
Too intense for the public, only known in silence, the majesty of great nature, the objective world, the spirit of chaos, ******** and spitting, unwrapping, giggling, ******* ******* sizing, ughhh putrid ugly hierarchical idiocy act, urching and lurching felt so secretly, brutality, eating its way out of the stocking, crispy toffee, Buddhist books that will never be read, shaving kids, raging! Hurting, false gratitude, let it out! Romping, stomping, groping for lustrous pious godless lurch, ****** through my pallet, based on experience, wreaking, cleansing
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 9:46 AM UTC
To raise a seagull would be no small task – do you know why?
Because both you and I are not seagulls.
If an individual is perceived to be revolting, then the question arises as to whether non-conformity or debasement are the identifiable issue.
Like those cheapened activities which are secretly laid bare within the hotel hallways of Sin City, my immeasurable and baron liaisons have also been revolted by scorpion-like stings, as the wind promotes her seductive and tantalising thoughts through the brushwood of Autumnal celebrations around the vicinity of Nevada.
It is important to understand that the fullness of sound involves the synchronicity of isolated connectedness, and that we validate both the message and the messenger.
Balancing acceptance and change is horribly attractive.
Do you know why, my reciprocal affiliation of that which is considered to be humanity?
For that which is conceived, formed and reproduced within the solar system of Nirvana is not so readily articulated within the parameters of epistemology.
Aren’t ornithology and psychology both flighty?
Oct 16, 2015
Oct 16, 2015 at 2:12 AM UTC
I was a little squirt
The nerd, on mission street, long hair
Seemed ungroomed, cleaned pants, guitar
Posters in my room.
The dead, the doors, the who, the stones.
Concert tickets to make me remember
What it was like high and gone.
So many years, to remember what I've gone through
Now nothing's old no more.
Societies cheapened down to the new.
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 10:21 AM UTC
Nihilated from naivety, only you
could prove despair isn’t the only truth,
and remedy everything that cheapened me.
Every empty fill of vacuous desire
ebbed away sentimentality
until idealism was an affliction,
a coerced condition.
Stripped of venom as armour
reposed in your words,
romanticism is no longer an abject territory.
You’re the memory
I silently ached to make;
the expectation too unrealistic to hold
until your arms became the sanctuary
I could deconstruct my defences for.
Feb 8, 2023
Feb 8, 2023 at 9:00 PM UTC
These words cannot escape
live in me
what I need, quite simply
is for words to flee
escape via pen, mouth
second best only to physical
more disconnect added with each middle man
gray keys
cyber space
words become code
which others cannot decode
decode my words
these words
thoughts reduced to slashes, arrows, numbers
marks on a screen telling what to do
cheapened to
lines
ink on a page
words in the mouth
a hand in mine
no words for such bliss but words assigned nonetheless
no right or wrong words
no words at all
yet somehow we need them
like something can't exist
if no words exist
Failure to say truth
failure to reality
words fail.
Nov 18, 2010
Nov 18, 2010 at 8:15 PM UTC
I'm spending some time in the forest, sleeping in the dirt
I'd call it soul searching but I treasure the ambiguous
It's more of all inclusive whateverthefuck
I felt like getting in touch with my primitive side
The concept is a gnawing rat behind my drywall brain
Something inside repressed by social structure
Everything was going pretty well
I found a squirrel, slow clap, am I right?
Cut the cute little ******* open
and fed myself with the grace of a sick dog
Shortly after I felt better about my masculinity
it's been cheapened so many times before
In that moment, I went for a little stroll
I stumbled upon that tree we carved our names in
the symbol of our love held up nicely
Unlike the practice and actuality
In this moment, I wonder what lime disease tastes like
Then, casually, I remove my matchbook from my pocket
along with the kerosene from my bag
I circle the tree, covering it as far as I can reach
Distributing it in the way a child tosses autumn leaves
on the last day of fall
I smile, watching the flames meet the sky
Sharing mutual agony with the tree
I am cynical
I am heartbroken
I am on fire
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 3:10 AM UTC
I would much rather lurk in the shadows than dance in the light. You are cheapened with each set of eyes that judge, envy, admire. Enough light will merely turn you into a pyre of broken dreams and desperate wishes. No. This is not for me.
I will be cultivated by the cold dark upon my skin, sustained by that which shrouds me all the more. And when I go into the light… there will be none left. You won’t see me, but you will feel when I close in around you. Just too mesmerized by the dancer in the light to save your soul.
Nov 25, 2016
Nov 25, 2016 at 9:47 PM UTC
merciless genocide
slaughter of native peoples
wrought with (super) wanton zeal
feeble ability to thwart
"discoverers" rapine wicked onslaught
merely ratcheted wrecked webbing
wrenched tribal unity,
violently rent asunder
vibrant indigenous linkedin weave
rendered sacred weltanschauung
decimated "noble savage"
woke wretched nightmare,
sans pock marked worsted weal
the Native American holocaust
shrouded in whitewashed veil
tragedy trampled truces
triggering tearful trail
scoped scattered remnant
snuffed out via surveil
futile sympathetic remonstrances,
viz rant and rail
hermetically sealed
***** deeds done dirt
blunted, cheapened,
and deadened
lance armstrong to quail
most definitely coloring faces
of captive
American Indians deathly pale
into figurative coffin
got hammered
rusty nine inch nail
subpar critical population mass
for survival, plus storied "red man"
bereft of ample potent male
off limits to original proprietors
forced to hightail
happy hunting grounds o'er hill and dale
becoming desiccated bleached bones
devoid of awful, pitiful,
and sorrowful fait accompli
and roaming spirits
like banshees bewail
grievous shadow a blot doth cause me to ail!
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 6:16 PM UTC
I have cheapened myself with profanity for far too long
it's time to call time out and slow down
my heart is very much broken
I don't feel good inside
I get upset real easily
when one is cruel to me
I am sorry for my dark mood
the pain inside just won't go
I am horrified I am so angry
I going to right now take it slow
been crying myself to sleep
I am a wreck on a **** heap
Don't let someone upset you this much
that's what they keep saying
yet it's ringing in my head
and I wish that I was dead
tic tic tic
bang
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 11:57 PM UTC
A circle of faucets
-dousing its interior with emotions both false and sincere-
flooding outside the four corners of this plastered room
A literal and perpetual flooding
-of undefined and undermined thoughts of constructivism-
coursing through the alleyways of the tiled flooring
A haughty idealism floored and trampled
-buried deep beneath the cheapened underlying concrete-
back to vulnerable piping to spout out of voracious spouts
In the end it's a cycle of tactile emotions coming from the circle of faucets itself.
Feb 12, 2016
Feb 12, 2016 at 7:46 AM UTC