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Nicholas Snell May 2013
The apartment hasn’t been cleaned for so long and has housed a depressive in it for the same length of time so that there is a glaze of slime-dirt on the floor, made of dried coffee, hot chocolate, maybe some **** or some spillage from a tube of steroid cream to treat an inflammation that never really goes.  The rate of ooze changes?.  Clean textiles are piled up on the floor, never having been folded, and mix here and there with *****: practical fatpants that make me look like a geologist and white-white cotton blankets that can be washed on HOT with lots of bleach that I purloined from some mentalhealthfacility.  The inbox is full of—is bristling with—remonstrances from Programs for the Nondoer—you haven’t filed, haven’t turnstiled, haven’t had your hologram chip assessed by central CENTRAL intelligence, what is wrong with you.  Upon stepping outside there is a beat during which I think maybe somewonder might swirl and buoy but no, just wethumid and *****, sidewalks cruddy and Haitians and quasi-Haitians muttering “taxitaxitaxi” in front of their Gypsy conveyances with their dubious certifications.  I should go for a ride in one, a dubious passenger for a dubious palanquin.  I tried the library but it was too hot and decrepit and too filled with Books For African-Americans, which always ****** me off; are only African-Americans going to read Wright or Douglass or Brooks?  Everyone is overrated, anyway, movies and theater and the moribund beat of commerce, and as the dangerous autos pass, sometimes not running you over, you can see morechange in the pockets of the shareholders of BeePee and Iacocca Coach-Wirx.  Any friendliness exhibited seems to contain an underovertone of  You’re Not Included Whiteboy White ****** Ghost *****, all archaic names I’ve been almost astounded to be called usually while balancing on tiptoe on some lurching, roaring dieselbus, grinding past off-off-off brand groceries that do a dubious business.  While making my police report I wink at a sevenyearold boy and I get a lustrous wink back butalas this is not enough to beat back those slurrycolored brainfazes.
F Elliot Mar 2021

Throughout the years,
you have made pictures of yourself
available for us to see

and through a number of them--
have shown unedited,  a clear and
horrendously honest view,  directly
into your deeply-struggling soul--  

and even if you may had just days  
or hours,  previously
conveyed a look of almost carefree
   happiness and beauty..  

Those chosen few  that
graciously gave the glimpse  of how
bad it can so often be for you,  
also.. unbeknownst to you,  

   gave light
of how tremendously valuable
and rare you really are.

And like a dyed-in-the-wool stalker,  
I saved screenshots of the ones  that
moved me to tears

years later..
and they still affect me that way

and in fairness, some the ones  also
to where you were truly glowing  
in all  of your natural beauty..

  on the ying' side
  of the bipolar swing.

You are rare and unique..
so very very one of a kind,
(and I have every right throughout the
years to say that to you here and now)


--that there is a  worth  within every single
part of it all that is wholly beyond measure--
you can feel it sometimes, little beauty
I know there is no way that you cannot.


One day  the ravens will no longer be
able to steal that wholly accurate,
beautiful self-view so easily from you,

..and you will be able to live that
wonderfully-accurate view out,  daily--
having now found it's way down in to
your very, central core..

.  .  .  

Sorry, young love.. I know how much  a
beautiful truth such as this, hurts.
You reveal so much of who you are
through the raw innerworkings  and
conveyances of your poetry and music.

You would not be that so very beautiful way,
if you did not believe that Love would
eventually find a way..

  yes, beauty..  even for you.
you will not die..  but instead
will  live.

<3
he fancies himself
as a rodeo rider
of fillies and mares
yet he hasn't the prerequisite
riding gear
to stay mounted
in these saddles fair
the fillies and mares
prefer a rider
that is a real bronco
one who can remain aboard
their conveyances
all night
not a rodeo rider
who can only muster
an eight second flight
negotiating modernity
at the MoMA

one's pushed along
mass conveyances

inertial rush an
intractable force

surer then the weight
of Newton's gravity

routes precarious
contemplative moments

nails scratching
Pollack's #9

in desperate attempt
to hold ground

Mall of America's
crushing crowds

vagrants pacing
the large garages

barely glimpsing
composite walls

the open spaces
bagging fast food art

not a bit of intimacy
in the **** place

Music Selection
Ornette Coleman
with Eric Dolphy
Free Jazz

2/24/11
NYC
jbm
Jared A Washburn Jun 2015
What about them?

Do they know struggle?
Struggle that saps all you got, takes all you give with a hearty slap on the back…
Struggle and toil and trouble and loyal men and women digging and dragging through it all searching, searching, sometimes finding, but searching hard and long and harder for that elusive light at the end of the tunnel…

Do they know heartbreak?
Heartbreak, that all encompassing down-in-the-gutter kind of heartbreak…
Heartbreak that shoves you around, all ragged, all disarrayed and disheveled, like a whipping boy, tied to a post, push, pulled, punished…

Do they know pressure?
Pressure that squeeeeezes the life of the building, the party, the place, here, there…
Pressure and persistence and powerful stuff all coming down around and circling above, a hurricane, or tornado, or tsunami sized catastrophe of whatever and wherever, yelling things like, “Who do you think you are?” and “Why I oughtta!” at me, at you, at most anyone…

What about these hands?
Not their hands, not even those hands, but these hands, here…

These hands are covered in conveyances…
These hands tell stories, not so many, but stories enough.
Here, these hands have sores.
Here, these hands have blisters, and cuts.
Here, these hands are *****, callused, crooked, bent, ****** name callers and spiteful shame shovers, scarred, split nailed, hang nailed, grievance and guilt-ridden givers and takers, knuckle cracking nervous wringers, making fists and holding whatever needs holding…

What am I to do with these hands, now?
What about you?
Have you looked at your hands or whose hands?

Whose hands?  Their hands…

Their hands are clean.
Polished.
Glove covered and protected, their hands do what they want, untouched, unscathed…
Or pocket protected in a deep, heavy coat, out of sight, out of mind…

But I’m not talking about them there,
I’m talking about them there, way over there,
Beyond those and them, way beyond…
Definitely not here, but over there, faaaarrr over there…
That’s the them I mean.

They tell us to **** it up…
That we can make ourselves, to leave them out of it.
Them over there think I’m not worth it…the trouble, that is.
They show their glove-protected hands, wave them in the air, showing the pristine cleanliness of those hands (not these hands) and wave and wave, declaring, “No sir” and “Not I,” turning their backs.

But, what about me or you…here?

What then?

When?

Now, then, whenever.

Who will help you…when you’re at the end of the rope?
No hope.
No line cutter, no savior, no nonsense, all business…
Feet dangling, body twitching, lungs gasping, all inches from the ground…
Hands knotted, head on the chopping block, axes raised…

Who will help you?

The insurance policy?
The friends and neighbors you avoided?
The family you forgot to send Christmas cards to?
The gods of wherever and whomever and whenever?
The politicos calling the shots, pulling the strings?
The big shots in the suits with the Rolexes,
                                               Rolls Royces, and riches?

Them?
Them way over there?

No, not them…
No way, no how.
Their hands are clean… Cleaner then these, here.

Where?
Right, right here.
preston Jun 2020
Your beautiful heart's glow is so often hidden behind the clouds of stubborness--  your lack of ownership within pretty much everything that is about who it is that you truly are. You ride.. skirting on the edges, never truly committing to much of anything that is inside of you.. putting pieces of yourself out there, yet never truly taking ownership of much of anything that truly is of you. You may feel things in their fullness that is of you within certain, contained moments, but the glow of those glimpses into your own self is far too often short-lived-- within something in you that almost completely washes it all away..

The nearly predictible pendulum-swing now so far the other way, almost completely denying those very real moments of connectedness and inner clarity within you..

And I am not one to want to live and operate between the swing's extremes, as it is there at that place that you expect others to pick up all of these un-owned pieces for you, and it is there also at that place that you have a whole string of men-- now.. and in your past, who all tumble and orbit in your wake in their desire to put together for you things that were never theirs to put together..

They were always things for you to take ownership of and become accountable for, but you will have no part of that, and so here you now float within all of your unaccountability, and will continue to float- as long you continue in your choice to not fully engage within yourself.
.. And you go on and say that I do not care about your heart, but you do not own much of anything that is about that amazing heart that is within you,
so how would you even know?

You don't..  but even if you did,
it would all but become buried once again within all that is unowned within you.

Loving in to a system like that, is not a good stewardship of one's ability to love.. so if there is some remote form of goodbye embedded within these nearly indiscernible conveyances..
then I thank you in advance for its  gracious release. You are not getting any younger, my beautiful.. one day this beauty-laden, cloud to cloud game of hide and seek is no longer going to work quite so well


The reception's gotten fuzzy..
the delicate balance has shifted.
Put on your gloves and black pumps,
let's pretend the fog has lifted.
Now you see me, now you don't.
Now you say you love me
pretty soon you won't.
If we get our full three score and ten
we won't pass this way again..
so kiss me with your mouth open,
turn the tires toward the street

and stay sweet.
https://youtu.be/dL1TRk6Q0pE
louella Jan 2022
ok
my head is full of junk and stress and anger
i am aching and my lungs are trying to grip onto any air they can find
beaten and bruised and confused
broken and misused and abused
i am in a worn down infirmary from the 20th century
bleak and mostly dead
young and unread
i am tearing my bed sheets and wishing i could flee
or recycle my carcass in a dumpster
by the penitentiary
  
  i.     am.      ill.      and.   poisoned.   and.  weak

can i just get a little rest or some sleep?
i amShredded  
and this hospital is forbidding
but i am about to go in
overdose from morphine
and become a distant memory
with tear streaks painted like silhouettes all over my detached face
i am frozen in the zone of the capable
drenched and shameful and incapable
can i punch a hole in the wall
or disappear on a private jet
never to be seen again?
in taiwan, bangladesh
china, the southwest
i will forever pray for escapism
and relocation of my barely pumping heart
please, let me retreat from the dock of the discreet
where i will forever become a inaudible nuisance
tortured between chains and bars and reins
anything is better than this pit i have been put in
spit on and inflamed and blamed
dragged and tortured and renamed
struck by the stick
i once hoped of holding in the first place
goodbye, i will decompose into the ground with the mushrooms
and i won’t need to be around anymore to make mediocre jokes
and laugh like the warden is correct in his words
please, i surrender
and i concur
later, i will no longer be a bore to the samurai with swords
i will be trudging through the mountain terrain
praying you will say my name
and i will be excused from the insane asylum because i will finally be deemed
“not insane”
by the nurse wearing slacks
and i will take my unschooled tracks
down the road
where i won’t bleed and toss and turn
i will belong and get along and be reborn
from the ***** of a once valuable opinion
i won’t die and cry and become shy
i will scream and be mean and fly
cause i will fit in somewhere where i knew i would belong all along
far from the president and the residents and my mom
and the fake acquaintances and desperate conveyances and the dark
reaching a pitch where i am silent but as noisy as an alarm
showing off all my parts
without being too nervous to crack a smile
or too anxious and in denial
even though tomorrow may be torture to the soul of the soldier
she will make it out alive
just bruised not misused and abused
just bruised
Who’s nervous for tomorrow?
Me!

In all seriousness, this is probably the best thing I’ve ever written

1/21/22
Dennis Willis May 13
What are these things
between us

emanations
and conveyances

quavering cells
crowd sourcing

wavefronts and
instruments

of time being passed
via grooves

in skint space
flapping

with such hope
and confusion

and want
stricken

and exposed
while darting out

for  some prize
imagined

— The End —