"collaborators" poems
leisure up my friend !
weaken open your shellfish hinge
and wet your beak
it’s a marked holiday break
unmarred by family obligation
there’s freedom
to make the most criminal crown of mistakes
in the name
of some frown of liberal investigation
on the town
an eager squad of collaborators are on board
they have your back
desperate, sick and starving gulls
broadened to explore the deplorable
on and on to the next and the next
death defining task
a meandering stagger of a bar crawl
perpetually powering through
as the day spans a revulsion
the heat stays as the day sinks beneath
in place of the suns rays
the heat radiates
from the baked city concrete
stepping out from the shelter of the bar
the night swelter respires fiercely
not done with our steam of annihilation
what establishment would take our kind ?
city has already bowed over it's plumage
to our ******* pilgrimage
bark melts and peels in strips off the trees
(meat shaved off the strip pole)
our heels spark the pavement
vermin and jackals follow our movement
from shimmering dark spots
and our vision constricts
our aim has become clotted...
...what was it that we reached for ?
oblivions fruit seemed a doable pursuit
it's the usual downhill shambles from here
familiar yet barely remembered
a rambling guff of bad ***** comedy
there is no plucky legend
just an embarrassment
Jun 10, 2023
Jun 10, 2023 at 9:47 PM UTC
The regions’ magic carpets are a-beckoning
The brassware in the back bazaars aglow,
Exotic spice is nice
For a very reasonable price
And the camel market’s just the place to go.
But…
Afghanistan’s dark Muslims are scheming
The women folk are sharpening their knives,
When foreign troops depart
The bloodletting will start
With collaborators screaming for their lives.
The children of the Ottoman are smarting
For their neighbours are showing them disdain
By peppering with bombs
Along with Syria’s pogroms
And I wonder why the local folk complain?
Oh the sun comes up with glory in old Egypt
As another national leader meets demise
And old Nasser’s bile will burn
As from his grave he will return
To try to rectify his children’s Holy lies.
There are whispers of a strike at the reactor.
There are reactionary reactions from Iran
With annulment of the bomb
The region should resume aplomb
But I have my doubts this mixture really can.
And it never rains on dear old dusty Cairo,
Here, you never feel the chill of falling snow,
You may stalk the back bazaars
For the rare blue water jars
But you should really buy protection when you go.
And they whinge that all the tourists here are dwindling
That the middle Eastern charm is all but spent,
When the red blood flows like wine
In the good old Bhyzantine
As the peace of night, with gunfire, is wrent.
But…
The dates are really sweet
And the carpetry so neat
And the music is exotic in the night,
And with the flash of Asian eyes
I can guarantee surprise
As you flee for very life…with ****** fright!
Marshalg
From the dark Bazaar
23 October 2012
© 2012 Marshal Gebbie
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:06 PM UTC
Rough tactile callouses.
Jointed mischief collaborators.
Twisted knuckly punishers.
Wrinkled hills and valleys.
Capability embodied.
Sensuality expressed.
Love experienced.
Life recorded.
Dancing Phalanges.
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 12:46 AM UTC
Masculinum Hyppeastrum,
monstrum;
the man eating
botanica,
the endlessly flowering plant,
had enough of me.
Went to sleep,
or worse,
he perished.
I must have said something nasty
about his size;
doesn't flower anymore,
all dried out,
doesn't do a thing,
his onion is weeping.
Christmas roses,
as I call the girls,
lost the will
to live.
All my,
previously green, flora
is pointing her leafless finger
at me.
I've done nothing,
that's the problem.
I forgot all about my green plants;
the environment is wrong,
there is too much acidity,
and that's my fault.
I will search
under the garden snow
for snow drops,
I left to themselves
two years
February,
my snow tears.
For colour,
I have lemons and limes,
green and yellow;
sitting on a traditionally,
blue, hand-painted
Chinese china platter.
River Yangtze
is still running through my mind.
Chai,
Lemon tea and lemonade.
~
Author Notes
*Flowering plants from Bahia : Hyppeastrum sp.
From the 1970s, many plant novelties from Bahia
came to light with the expeditions carried out
by Howard Irwin and collaborators
of NYBG (USA) and by Raymond Harley
from RBG-Kew (UK). This provoked a renewal
of interest, among botanists, in the flora of Bahia*
(3-1-07)
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 3:43 PM UTC
It was a place, I used to hang my art
now a poetic graveyard, devoid of better parts
Friends, collaborators, and people that I knew
all that's left are reminders, a place, I was passing through
Hours, days, and months, spent typing like a fool
architecting prose and rhyme, utilizing every tool
Crafting and collecting, arranging words sublime
the site, now covered, drown, in vitriolic slime
Becoming witness too, such complete technological idiocy
lack of competent management, absence, of rote security
Trolls by any name, of many names they used
all of them may have been only one, ultimately abused
Rest in peace, and know the torch, not fallen free
caught by hands, more poetic, than mine will ever be
Sep 13, 2016
Sep 13, 2016 at 8:09 PM UTC
Who are they? Who are they?
Why all these fights, why this fray?
Why innocents are killed, why they are displaced?
Why minorities are ill treated, why they are chased?
Who are they? who are they?
Are they pawns of puppets, who is funding? , who pays?
Do they want to stop revolutions, are they against democracy.
Is it true that puppet dictators are behind the conspiracy?
Who are they? Who are they?
Freedom fighters at times, At times criminal they portray.
Why this sectarian violence, why policy of 'divide and rule'?
Are they collaborators of oil thieves, are they their tool?
Who are they? Who are they?
God knows best but they don't follow prophet's way.
Their actions are criminal and this is the fact.
I just don't like them, I condemn their act.
Nov 13, 2014
Nov 13, 2014 at 9:40 PM UTC
We contradict here, all the premonitions of old,
that as hollow men and women, we should rise,
and take into our hand a pre-existing cause,
to band together, kindred of our character.
Though we strive to be forbidden to the difference,
harvested collaborators to our unrestrained hearts,
As our spirits try to ascend, we prohibit their actions.
We are bidden, overridden, and we are ******
Did we grip our brother’s hand when he was losing?
Did we tend our mother’s hurt when she was broke?
We deprived our very sister, to implore till she was dead,
and we refereed the fingers, which fed us until they bled.
As a single man once intoned, on a stairway miles away;
We must subsist and struggle as one great homeland,
carry our neighbor’s burdens as though they were our own.
one kin, one race, though the color of skin may diverge.
Let us not stop in our virtuous endeavor, our strong destiny,
We are Lords of the future, master and slave, there be none.
We have risen from the catacombs of supreme despondency,
have accepted the heretical pressure of a ruined significance.
The night is no longer our mission; we travel unstained portals,
those which have always foreshadowed our meager gains.
We live for love, and cannot only give earned compassion.
We must love for the sake of devotion, and the sake of bounty.
We will take the apprehension of the mother, and the father,
and we will pacify it, will comfort their woes, and they will smile.
We will teach the child to go forth into the Dark, an existing torch,
upholding what we see as the shadows of bravery and optimism.
And when the times comes, and we lay down to die in peace,
we go, knowing the world had its little exploit of freedom,
its earned hope, not wasted, against bleak souls of the depraved,
having permitted the sun to shine; smiling as we resign to fate.
May 4, 2018
May 4, 2018 at 3:00 AM UTC
Collaborate with Society, By Chris.
In the world of our benefactors or such, others calling
Others collaborators. As if such a term were,
Shameful.
I ask you, what greater endeavor exists than
That of collaboration?
For example in our current unparalleled enterprise
Refusal to collaborate is simply a refusal to grow
Which some insistence on suicide if you will.
Did the lungfish refuse to breathe air?
It did not,
It crept forth boldly while its brethren
remained in the
Blackest ocean abyss.
With lidless eye forever staring at the dark.
Ignorant, is it not? Doomed despite their
internal vigilance.
Would we model ourselves on the
trilobite?
Would that mean all accomplishments of
humanity
Could fade, nothing more than a layer of
broken,
Plastic shards, thinly strewn across a fossil
Bed, sandwiched between a burgess shell, and
Eons worth of mud? In order to
Be true to our nature and our destiny, we must aspire
to
Greater things we have outgrown our cradle.
It is feudal to cry for mother’s milk when our true
sustenance
Await us, Among the stars! Therefore I say yes! I am
a collaborator! We all must collaborate, willingly, eagerly, if we
expect to
Reap the benefits of unification. And reap we shall! Civic
deeds do not go unrewarded, and contrary wise complicity
with people's cause will
Not go unpunished. So please, be wise… Be safe, be aware.
We have plunged humanity into free-fall...
Now, is the moment to redeem ourselves.
© Chris .B 2017
Nov 9, 2017
Nov 9, 2017 at 9:38 PM UTC
Ladies and Gentleman, esteemed friends and collaborators, we find ourselves beset once more by a particular individual's overwhelmingly perverse actions of self-aggrandizement. Yes indeed, there is a stranger here among us, a purveyor of hate and dismissal, lauding his own horrifying mimicry of poetry as the makings of a legend. I will not foul my words by speaking his thrice-accursed name, and in truth, there is no need. Any one of us who has found our heart-wrought pages smeared by the childish, aristocratic and may I say it, disgusting blabberings of this ill-begotten rake shall know exactly of whom it is I speak. And I speak in ernest, terrible ernest, against this self-proclaimed genius against whom we worthless ants are compared as to a god. And in the name of humanitas and libertas we tolerate his vile ravings and insensate curses thrown toward us as if we were nothing but cattle. Why? Because we believe in something that he will never be able to understand or appreciate, the very concept of a community throws him into confusion and fear. People are dying in the streets in the name of everything that we here stand for and he has the audacity, nay, the pompousness to assault my friends in the only haven some of them have ever known. Some of you may retain your hope for him and your patience in light of his narcissism. I however, have lost my patience and will tolerate it no longer. I consider it my duty to counter his message of hate wherever I find it. I urge you all to do the same.
Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 11:59 PM UTC
This century is of the cash and capital,
Its captains are collectors of credits,
Their collaborators are culprits,
This century is circumventing my calmness,
Its clauses are cuffing me,
Their conditions are confining me,
This century is a cruel calamity,
Its covenants are costing me my composure,
Their claws are creeping in on me.
My confidence is collapsing,
My clarity is crippled,
My consciousness is ceasing.
This century is carving out my carnage.
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 2:15 AM UTC
TLACAELEL
Great, gold-eyed Eagle, greet our messenger,
We offer his most precious fluid, Lord.
Bright Hummingbird, accept Thy rubied fruit.
In tawny plumes, Thou chaperonest the day.
[To worshipers] We are collaborators with the gods,
Performing our transcendent duty here.
For by this action lie the only means
To eternalize the circuits of the sun:
An aloe balm to all the sufferings
Of his interminable pilgrimage.
WORSHIPERS Blue Prince, may Thou incline Thy heart, that by Thy grace for yet a while may we see in dreams.
TLACAELEL
For we are God’s own chosen tribe, elect,
As kernels gleaned and winnowed from the chaff,
To side in cosmic struggle with the sun,
To side with goodness, vowed to ascertain
Its triumph over evil’s looming storm,
And to bestow to all humanity
The heavenwide profits of the victory
Of the resilient forces of the light
Over the gathering powers of the night.
Let us pray. Exit.
WORSHIPERS Huitzilopochtli, perform Thy office. Do Thy work. May I not reject Thee. May I not falter before Thee. May Thy heart desire whatsoever Thou mayest desire. This is all.
Trumpets, drum. All exit.
Oct 19, 2016
Oct 19, 2016 at 3:18 PM UTC
Can get you incarcerated , falsely accused ,-branded like cattle,-assigned to a herd--,--held in contempt-,--declared -a criminal-, racism--bigotry at bequest of these hands-, words that separate-,-that shock and offend ..Written language can question with a power unequaled ,-like Democracy itself-, redefining-, respecting all groups-without regard to contemptible , collaborators spearing with self righteous commandments hidden in hate !. Poetry is not for politically correct , faint of heart , or sheep being led to slaughter. She is every emotion that human beings foster , paint for the artist , on the palette of her chosen desire ! At whim , with Fire , write as though you are carving granite , studious , with forethought and with great strength !!
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 1:46 PM UTC
Cave Art
The caves of Altamira, Spain
were painted, it is said
not by one or a collaborative few
pondering together the arrangement of forms into a composition,
but by strangers
wandering in and out,
each adding independently their own designs--
a hand or deer or buffalo--
their mark upon the world.
So, too, it was on the walls of the gas station bathroom.
The wandering strangers left their marks
not in pigments of red or yellow ochre
but with technology quite new—
sharpies, pocketknives, and written word.
They etched their works in jagged strokes upon the peeling paint.
Their subject matter mostly centered
incoherent curses
but one corner housed
a whole political debate.
They had no antelope nor spears
but still, a ghost of beastly hunts—
of chasing or of being chased—
perhaps is recognized.
Spacious though the canvas was,
it struggled to contain the thoughts
of its collaborators—
so much they had to say
that like the painters of Lascaux
they simply overlapped the strokes of others who had gone before,
interlocking cries into a web.
To a conservator’s dismay,
some of their words were silenced
by a mist of sapphire aerosol spray
but still, they can be read
by those who care to see.
An anthropologist who stops and looks quite carefully
can trace the lines below the paint
and read what lies beneath—
the testaments of artist souls and neolithic dreams.
Jan 7, 2022
Jan 7, 2022 at 4:51 PM UTC
The weekend sprinted past without acknowledgement. More time travel than sleep. Feels like I never left this desk. Did I go outside? Sunlight is a forgotten fancy. Everything buzzes in artificial, mercury-vapour gas-discharge, office white.
Strong coffee, mouth-only smile, and emergency chocolate at-the-ready.
Digital calendar fairy sweeps her wand - plink.
Upcoming meeting onset.
Wince.
Nearly go-time.
Deep breath.
I need help.
Close my eyes and consider my options.
In silent prayer, I call on my battle-allies. My conflict squad for the tiny, inconsequential campaigns that are laid out before me, scheduled neatly in 30-minute increments.
Sarcastic skirmishes with witless weapons. Budgetary disbursement battlegrounds, each heralded by a twinkly bright plink. Officious double agents and grinning traitors. Good sense and basic decency defeated ad nauseam.
Inwardly, I flick through my mental deck of cards. Mythic personality avatars. Figurative and emblematic. Mostly trusted, often helpful allies and collaborators. My squad. Grown over years. Battle-honed when the stakes were substantially higher.
Nine of Swords, Nymph Aegina
Scared and small. Of water and steel
Daughter of rivers
Mistrust, despair
Reduce, retreat, conceal
Queen of Swords, Pallas Athena
Warriors and winter. Shrewd and tough
Strength and judgement
Challenge, compel
Defeat, critique, rebuff
King of Cups, Charles the Great
Gifted and keen. Springtime and fire
Patron of culture
Consider, rethink
Exhort, create, inspire
Five of Wands, keening Achos
Dust and torment. Deep distress
Bringer of weeping
Commend, lament
Regret, bewail, profess
Queen of Wands, Lady of Lorien
Fearless and brave. Of summer and tree
Wielder of Light
Perform, protect
Assert, direct, decree
I select our Lady, knowing that Aegina and Achos may vie for a cameo.
Channelling my Queen of Wands,
I arrange my face
and await the knock at the door.
Oct 28, 2024
Oct 28, 2024 at 5:42 AM UTC
The Imagine Nation
When asked where I am from
I no longer mention my country
by name because people will
soon enough realise that my
accent is the noun, not a verb.
I come from a place where
daydreams are never interrupted
by darkness because it’s a marriage
of preoccupation with nonconformity.
Curiosity gives an illusion of genius,
insight and resourcefulness are the
true collaborators of artistic invention.
Panache cannot be consumed.
Apr 24, 2023
Apr 24, 2023 at 6:51 AM UTC