"clubbed" poems
Songs of Oregon: No. 1 “Gonna Make You Crazy, That Place”
nuts, crazy peeps
whomever wherever,
regardless of race creed color or gender (did I get ‘em all?)
current state of residence (geo-identified)
a poem - the very same recited,
as a disclaimer, a yellow finger wagging warning:
“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”
now kids, I’m a veteran of foreign travel,
many continents, cold and hot, rivers and seas,
some living, some dead,
some so big they named it Endless,
been to the great cities, Swiss villages,
pyramids, climbed Masada,
danced on grapes (why can’t I recall where)
skied the Alps, trekked the Sinai Desert,
clubbed in Rio, and danced till morn,
on a certain Greek Isle that rhymes with Mickey’s Nose
even been to L.A and San Fran, left poorer
but in sync,
always came home
with my mind decently reshaped
me/ a product of gritty unpretty grime,
streets of normal humans
acting like normal escaped mad persons,
this brutal city island instilled a
layer of fat and smog neath my skin,
a kind of migrating duck-like survival kit,
came with a homing beacon included
the those of you who know me,
perhaps too well, ken we citified islanders
love our beaches (fire hydrants)
cherish our sun dappled blessings
upon on farms (window sill herb gardens)
and sunning settlements (rooftops)
they say our tap water is secretly bottled,
sold in places where the springs purportedly
run crystalline
though we don’t got no pinot, just sweet concord grape,
so sweet, the wine of children and street nodders,
needy for instant sugar highs
so as we new Yorkers proudly
say on our license plates,
prove it or stfup!
so a first hand investigation for which
the taxpayers won’t be charged even a lousy mill,
deemed necessary to put to rest this crazy claiming warning
“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”
guessing must be something in the water and the wine
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 9:00 AM UTC
I had to play.
I had to play.
my stolen heart turned hard to *****
T’was me snubbed.
T’was me who snubbed.
And glittery diamonds to dirt, were clubbed.
But I had to play.
I had to play.
Cause he held all cards anyway.
I had tried to run.
I tried to run.
We were not there for love, but “fun”
And I HAD to play.
I YEARNED to play..
I was his
lonely.
desperate.
prey.
Now he's moved on..
He moves on.
leaves his
pathetic.
little.
pawns.
I'd had to play
I needed to play.
I didn’t want to get away..
He'd gotten bored
He gets bored.
He wiped away our checkered board.
Now he's not here.
He was never HERE...
And I'd do anything to feel him near.
Come play.
Come play.
Mar 28, 2022
Mar 28, 2022 at 5:24 PM UTC
Oakes-photo, hypocrisy and flagrant mirky plateau. Brimming celestial warrants overcrowding public housing systems. North-South lights, sell costly iPhone Apps; and then there are Social Societies of non-verbal delight. Password protected non-profitable and over-costly educations of no reward or biblical synonyms. Catastrophizing hash-tag dot.com. Weary party going poster children with glowing anemone guts, fruity looped cantlings, ravenous scattered supper clubbed coughing up ******* on their strange and central affairs unit. Overcome the candisation and sugary affairs of any of the ***** and pops that erstwhile matter less and less. We are speaking of nomenclatures that don't arise. Promises and by which confession aloof romanticizes every Tom dicking Mary that carries the theory of sustainable energy, prussian blue, and irregular browsing.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:46 AM UTC
HE lived on the wings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.
Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado
Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks.
Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy
With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain.
They killed swearing to remember
The shot and charred wives and children
In the burnt camp of Ludlow,
And Louis Tikas, the laughing Greek,
Plugged with a bullet, clubbed with a gun ****
As a home war
It held the nation a week
And one or two million men stood together
And swore by the retribution of steel.
It was all accidental.
He lived flecking lint off coat lapels
Of men he talked with.
He kissed the miners' babies
And wrote a Denver paper
Of picket silhouettes on a mountain line.
He had no mother but Mother Jones
Crying from a jail window of Trinidad:
"All I want is room enough to stand
And shake my fist at the enemies of the human race."
Named by a grand jury as a murderer
He went to Chihuahua, forgot his old Scotch name,
Smoked cheroots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock of the people.
How can I tell how Don Magregor went?
Three riders emptied lead into him.
He lay on the main street of an inland town.
A boy sat near all day throwing stones
To keep pigs away.
The Villa men buried him in a pit
With twenty Carranzistas.
There is drama in that point...
...the boy and the pigs.
Griffith would make a movie of it to fetch sobs.
Victor Herbert would have the drums whirr
In a weave with a high fiddle-string's single clamor.
"And the muchacho sat there all day throwing stones
To keep the pigs away," wrote Gibbons to the Tribune.
Somewhere in Chihuahua or Colorado
Is a leather bag of poems and short stories.
2.8k
A couple becomes comfy...comatose
Their coffins carved carefully
At the cost of the cuticles
That cut the cloth concealing the cause of calumny.
Cut with claws
Claus? Santa has no clue
But the paws with the claws came from Cope,
The coyote cub who clubbed with truth.
Calm,
Palms clasped on Aphrodite's coffee cup
Caffrodite, cups
Cups that carry potential - kinetic, energy,
Crash!
...Chaos conceived carelessly
A ****** tear
This is the C-Section
Confused?
No concern...know care
Because you are capable
Superman,
Cape-able
But soon the caffeine kicks in,
And the common carotid is cooked
Killer
Compare now, casualties to cows...
Not so different
Still, the crowd plays casual
Aloof
So dream of a connection concentrate in a container
And swig
Constrict the fists and relax
To be carried off into the cosmos
Consumed by clouds of gas...
Below are the circus clowns
Coughing, conceiving, creating.
Is it a crime? To be cut off from contemplation?
Akin to Galileo, craniums will roll
While eyes stay still completely
A quiet kiss to the clavicle of our collective cast
Soothes the commotion to
This clamoring performance
A hush to this cacophony
Jun 25, 2014
Jun 25, 2014 at 3:52 PM UTC
He hates daylight with sense of a mole,
He has curtains all over his chambers, to preserve
His heart nocturnal, where he derives joy
As he does glory from his night shift
As a mortician at the city morgue,
Where I was deadly drunk one night,
And fallaciously declared dead by a nurse
And got dumped into this domain of the AG
Fellow drunkards who became sober to cry
For help out of the morgue, the AG clubbed
Them lethally to final death, forget of drunkardness
Another sick person un-convulsed back to life
He thrashed his skull with a menacing club,
Only two strong hits sent the misfortunate man
Back a really rigor mortis, finally dead,
I chose not to breathes loudly till dawn
When the dayshift mortician came on duty
I pleaded for his favour and sympathy,
He culled me out of death, I went home
Running swearing to myself never to drink again!
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 7:44 AM UTC
November days sees me pummelled,
bashed and clubbed to a pulp.
Buried then exhumed...
Skin and bones,
hair and scalp.
Dusks watch me stretch,
warp and break.
Bitten, chewed and spat out.
So that I could come together...
So I could nurse
the same old doubt.
Nights abrade,
as they span for hours.
They sap, they wear.
They mock and they jeer.
There is bittersweetness in the solitude
where coherence of mind
is scarce and rare.
Dawns greet with tiptoeing feet.
Cradle my body where it had lain.
They resuscitate me. Fill me up.
They ward off nightly deaths
so I am reborn,
again and again...
***Into
November.***
.
Nov 15, 2016
Nov 15, 2016 at 8:12 AM UTC
(part 1)
Have you forgotten us?
We, who, taken from our homes
Our families and friends
Were shunted like cattle
In railway boxes fit for pigs
Yet treated worse than either.
Have you forgotten us?
We, who were stamped and numbered
Stripped and tortured
Bruised and beaten
Used as playthings for perverted men.
Have you forgotten us?
We, who were stripped naked
And bundled into innocent looking rooms
Whose clinical stench
Belayed their hidden purpose.
Have you forgotten us?
We, who screamed with terror
Drowning the laughs
Of those outside
As steel faucets
Belched forth death.
Have you forgotten us?
We, the millions of children
Who like rotting manure
Were bulldozed into
Bottomless pits
Turning them into mountains.
(part 2)
Have you forgotten us?
You, who protest so loudly, so bitterly
Against the use of animals
In scientific experiments.
No one protested
When they used us.
Have you forgotten us
You, who care so much for your old
Your sick and your disabled,
Our old were clubbed to death
Our sick were left to die
Our disabled were used for sport.
Have you forgotten us?
You, who lovingly protect your children.
Ours were wrenched away from us
Ours were used for ****** perversions,
Ours were skinned alive.
No one protected them.
Have you forgotten us?
You, who found the camps
The massive ovens
The mountains of bodies
The hoards of hair and teeth
The human skinned lampshades.
Have you forgotten us?
You, who murdered us.
Are you deaf to our cries?
Were they simply orders?
Were you just soldiers?
Didn’t you really know?
Have you forgotten us?
You the world we left behind.
Can thirty years really dull
Your memory of it all?
Did it really happen?
Wasn’t it all exaggerated?
(part 3)
So now we look down
We thirty million or so
At the indifference
The political cover-ups
The bland excuses
The half-hearted attempts at justice.
The murderers who live
In luxury and power
The monsters of earth
Who created hell
The generation who forgot
The generation who never knew
The generation who will never know
The jackboots
The ********
The Nazis’ salute
(part 4)
Yes you have forgotten us.
Mar 31, 2010
Mar 31, 2010 at 6:58 AM UTC
Failed again; only this time I lose everything, including my mind.
I plan to wake tomorrow with the intention of trying again.
Your life is your life,
Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
I know some "thing" is watching, listening closely.
"It," sends me hope through whispers, whispers only I can hear.
I am scrutinized, ostracized, berated for even paying attention to "that thing."
I am hurt. I want to quit. But I lost everything already, what more do I have to lose?
I act again. I try again. I fail again.
I've given myself the piece of advice to: hold these failures close to my heart. They will pave the way. One stepping stone after another.
You will ride life into perfect laughter.
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 7:17 PM UTC
by Barry Lopez
I'd heard so much good
about this place,
how the animals were cared for
in special exhibits. But
when I arrived I saw even
prairie dogs had gone crazy in
the viewing pits; Javelina had no mud to
squat in, to cool down; Otter was
exposed on every side, even in his den.
Wolf paced like a mustang,
tongue lolling and crazy-eyed,
unable to see anyone who looked like
he did–only Deer, dozing opposite in
a chainlink pen.
Signs explain
the animals are good because
they **** animals who like oats
or corn too much.
Skunk has sprayed himself out,
with people rapping on his glass
box. Badger's gone to sleep
under a red light and children ask
if he's dead in there (dreaming of dead
silence). And
Cougar stares like a clubbed fish
into one steel corner all morning, figuring.
Only Coyote doesn't seem to care, asleep under a
creosote bush, waiting it out.
Even the birds are walled up here,
held steady in chicken-wire cages for
the staring, for souvenir photos.
And this, on the bars for Eagle:
The bald eagle was
taken as a fledgling
from a nest in New
Mexico by an
Indian. He planned on
pulling feathers for cer-
emonial headdresses
every year. The
federal government seized
the bird and turned
it over to the
Desert Reserve
for safekeeping.
Bear walks in his own
*** smells concrete
and his own **** all day long.
He wipes his nose on the wall,
trying to **** it.
At night when management is gone,
only the night watch left,
the animals begin keening: now
voices of Wood Duck and
Turtle, of Kit Fox and everyone else,
Bear too, lift up like the bellowing
of stars and kick the walls.
14 miles away, in Tucson, are movie houses,
cold beers and roads out of town,
but they say animals know how to pass the time
well enough. And after a few beers
they'll be just like Indians–
get drunk, fall down and spoil it all.
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 2:20 PM UTC
The would-be King is angry,
adamant that his silk suit trumps
all the other suits and pantsuits
vying for the throne.
His head is in his ace hole.
He thinks all the Queens are airheads,
gropes them as if they are ******
to be replaced when one gets old
and a prettier one comes along.
He shuffles his Jacks,
mere minions, all interchangeable,
discards them, sluffs them off.
His would-be subjects
are treated like deuces and tres;
the cards that do the hard work
of making a winning hand,
mostly with spades,
are clubbed into submission.
Though he values diamonds,
his deck contains no hearts,
they bleed too liberally for his ilk.
With his hair pulled over his eyes
like a dealer’s shade,
he deals from a stacked deck,
under the table, cards hidden up his sleeve.
He can’t see himself for what he is,
the fifty-third card in the deck,
the joker.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 7:24 PM UTC
Moon butcher- weaned on courting flesh from safe
viewing, whistling to draw the blinds over fettered
flocks, all whose beaks are wired. Upon his eyes, a
monastic charm, cuffed by all means toward profane
morality, are his deeds and are his perfect misdoings.
And in the most miserable quarters of the mind,
along sad shrines where these supple thoughts are
stowed and ferried as the cattle he should drive;
Bird killer.
How mad you are– crimp hearted figure, without
lament for tattered homes and frayed hulls of a child's
laughter, pulled from heavy sacks. But all are beaten dogs
on morbid eyes, clubbed all with gentle hands and choked
with deft ideals-malformed. How artful though, that no
pinion primed should go clipped, nor aviaries-bold should
hold them here, but only should their minds be tainted–
Made whole in mechanics-belt driven. Just stay and take
my woeful Ode: Tyranny be your maxim; conformity be
our dying ways.
Dark ways; made so dark only in their leaden glare, that all
should turn and close their eyes for night. Monolithic as
mauled humans, ravished as the bark of black Willows and
pawing tides‒ all an empty obelisk of horrors-makeshift.
Pavlovian; cold soup; torn rags on the dashboard‒ and
for miles upon miles, ravaged quill over sunken hills, the
feathers poured here as ink into my ebbing dreams. Though,
to think yet that all had been warm upon a day, now too
distant and criminal. Too nefarious for notion, to hold
wolves for wool, and kooks for feathers stalked to hiding.
Jun 14, 2017
Jun 14, 2017 at 2:20 PM UTC
Every artist has his own stroke, creates his own distinctive masterpiece. he realises, art is subjective and is incomparable. he knows every writer has his own collection of words that personify transcendence. There are uncanny strokes of paint brushes; drops of ink that transudate out on pieces of parchment; he understands.
But then again when it comes down to him, the voice within his head that is clubbed along with introvert in him, the constant thought to remain an incognito and the feeling that throws him into a chasm of loneliness, makes him tally himself against the odds and deadpan.
Jul 16, 2016
Jul 16, 2016 at 4:11 AM UTC
I've been trying to write
draw a picture
in colours
for so long
It's not happening
Words blur
sentences get clubbed together
television waves
pixelate
manga and anime
dissipate
I need to write something
there's something missing inside
Help, I can't breathe
Help.
I can't stop thinking
Somebody make my brain stop.
Make it screech to a halt
I don't want to sit and imagine
A hundred ways to die
Tonight
I don't want to lose sleep over this
I can't afford to miss another day of school for this
(people will start wondering)
My ***** little secret
Only mine
Help. Make the voices stop. Make them sing. Make them be quiet.
Let me write.
I need to escape.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 2:35 PM UTC
To Be Governed
“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 3:09 PM UTC
Oh, what are we, anyway?
we are but only men, my love,
we are so simple it hurts
we are broken
we are what we aren’t.
it’s okay,
we’re in love.
behind doors slammed shut
these walls never see sun.
we are naked, separated,
we chew quietly on meat grown cold.
we sip softly milk gone sour.
because in a world so bruising
so tainted of blood,
so full of this lust,
we are clubbed, barred, ******
and hung up to dry.
the hate our hearts see
sews them shut.
and still,
we’re
in love
pushed in stenched corners
pointed in wrong directions
laid face down,
nose turned up.
we are sleeping
when we most deserve to be awake.
we’re touching hands
when hands are just shadows and fragments
of imagination.
we’re disgusting
when we’re in the presence of other men.
it’s okay,
we’re in love.
Aug 31, 2013
Aug 31, 2013 at 6:43 AM UTC
It's been 7 years since my accident,
Today my grievous injuries are old,
Nothing I could've done to prevent,
But I'm so happy today that I'm bold.
I will live and I will happily thrive,
When it is time I'll be really happy,
Elements are expressed in me all five.
A single terror that still haunts me,
I do not want a long life for future,
Instead I prefer a really small life,
If it is happy with a family to inspire.
Wait I don't for a beautiful partner,
I look for a fine woman as my wife,
Not another immature person for life.
Today I am really happy with time,
I am really happy with May 7, 2017,
Unlike 2010, this May 7 was happy,
This very day started in the midnight.
I had my rebirth day with friends,
My friend Kamlesh had her b'day,
We clubbed both of the celebrations.
May 7, 2017
May 7, 2017 at 2:33 PM UTC
Clubbed to death
bludgeoned,
Life suddenly cut short,
The motive well
is unknown,
Perpetrator still not caught.
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 10:05 AM UTC
~for you~
~~~
when I put
twosome of twisted lips together,
long dragging one foot clubbed,
agony before the other,
but one hand obeys commands,
the other disdains, ignores,
one only eye-seeing, vision impaired,
and the body laughs at the notion of
paired coordinates
tongue disobeys desires,
limping thru life's everything,
thoughts locked down on pause,
mid-think is a cassette tape
in a seven-second delayed,
a fist cannot be unbroken, unwound
chorus of mockers,
herd of haters
rejoice in my diminution,
using my weakness for ammunition
for I am a stutterer,
just another you,
misstepping, fracturing,
the minutes of a life disastered,
suffered, sadly, no gladly hanging about
but I do not forsake hope
repair each word with the honor
of a slow enunciation distinguished,
ungainly shaped, yet soldier-motion forward,
in small poems and with one hand holding
for I am armed with certainty
as I stutter thru living,
more than awaiting, comprehending,
you, you,
understand full well,
that we are all handicapped
salvation arrives when
a touching whisper heard in one solitary ear,
you sir, you, are not alone
for who among us dare deny
we are all stutterers
Oct 25, 2015
Oct 25, 2015 at 7:07 AM UTC
A scrap of bread lies
on the cobblestone floor.
Undisturbed,
Unreachable.
A prisoner starves
in his lonely cell.
Imprisoned,
Defeated.
He can see the piece of bread,
It's the first food he has seen for weeks.
Wondering if he can reach it,
the man decides to try.
His hand just fits under
the heavy wooden door,
but while the man reaches
his hand is clubbed without warning.
The man is confused because
he can only see the bread,
but there is a guard with a wooden club in hand
prepared to beat back the poor man's hand.
Now the man, he is strong,
so he continues to try
and the guards keep up with the beatings
a new guard every time.
The man keeps reaching
and the guards keep changing.
His hands are now bleeding
but the guards they keep beating.
This cycle goes on and on
until time runs together.
Then the final guard comes down
but the man is ready.
He reaches further than he has ever reached before
and he touches the bread.
He actually grabbed it
feeling it for only a moment makes all the beatings worth while.
The last guard stomps on his arm,
up near the elbow where the arm sticks from the door.
The guard watches as the man sqwirms
trying to pull his arm back, but that wont happen
The club is raised and brought down with force,
too many times to count
but more forceful
than ever before.
The man's fingers break.
Bones shatter and blood
drains from his body,
flowing onto the floor
but the guard continues to beat,
to break,
to shatter
and destroy.
Then the guard stops
and the man slowly withdrawals his hand.
He is left with a useless appendage,
the bread left untouched.
and his hand,
his ******* hand.
Broken beyond the ability to heal
and the man is left in his cold dark cell,
no longer able to feel.
Nov 20, 2011
Nov 20, 2011 at 3:50 PM UTC
I went home for Easter Sunday
During my senior year of college.
I was at that age
Where only my mother
Could call me a boy.
At one point in the weekend
When I was alone with my father
He tried to apologize
For all the things he had not done
When I was still a boy.
There are many things
My father never did.
He never called me stupid
He never yelled at me or demeaned me
He never clipped my wings
And he never clubbed my head.
Ther are other things
My father never did.
He never left home
He never came home drunk
He never beat my sister or brother
or my mother
He never failed us.
There is one last thing
My father never did.
He never has told me he misses me
Nor have I said it to him
But I could never doubt that he does
Because I do
And we are two of a similar kind.
Dec 4, 2010
Dec 4, 2010 at 9:01 AM UTC
To this world he is an oaf,
an idiot,
a simpleton.
Towering over the crowd,
his clubbed foot shuffling through the mall,
bottom lip drooping,
maybe with a drip of unaware drool.
His clean, and at one time,
neatly pressed attire
now disheveled, unmatched.
It tells us that someone cares for him,
yet they give him his much needed sense of pride.
He greets you,
and though you do not comprehend a word from his oversized head, you understand perfectly that he is humbled in your presence.
There is a smile hidden on that face though.
Not the blank smile of an imbecile,
but the constant grin of a truly happy man.
A man not of this world,
but of a world void of care and worry.
His feeble mind was not born with the integrated chip of despair,
or infected by someone else’s insanities,
it was and will be until his death,
filled with loving words,
positive and uplifting prayers,
and nonsensical songs of long ago.
For this man is not alone in this cruel world,
this place of daily criticism.
No,
he has a Mother,
and her kind and loving face will be there in the morning,
and she will be the last voice he hears as she tucks him in at nightfall. A Mother that bore him,
and though she took not an oath,
will be the one with him
when he takes his last breath.
Happy Mother's Day
Inspired by "Ox" and his Mother I met today at the Mall
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 6:39 PM UTC
a stew of mortal
affordable gifts,
litter our lives,
tacky raining clouds
dribbling
- no -
its more like
robotic justice
we're
muzzled frantic cherries
chained to the liver
of mass media
- no -
its
hysteria, rumor, intrigue, ******
****
that’ll do...
two hundred thousand years
of this, you’d think we’d know
you reap what you sow
- no -
just clubbed fish
gawking for air
until deathly
first world bar-b-q
wine of cold lonely grapes
life on a pedestal
is sure to topple
maybe we'll eat
apples during the
fall
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 5:56 AM UTC
Drank too
much whiskey
went to shoot Tommy Perkins
Spent all my cash on
the whiskey
clubbed Tommy Perkins
upside the head with the gun
and told him he better give
me the money he owes me
when he pays me I'll load my gun
and get back to the
original plan.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 6:49 PM UTC