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Unpolished Ink Feb 2023
Sunset lends its many shades
as a dying day begins to fade
the whites of clouds
and parrotfish blues
replaced by glorious fiery hues
colours dance in the sky's cotillion
of melting golds and sweet vermillion
The deafening house music
The crowd of colorful suits and gowns
And the shifting colorful lights
Trapped me in the ballroom

The tasty sophisticated food
The elegant decorations
And the freaking mandatory cotillion
Didn't stop me from ******* up

I should've been more social
I should've treated my date better
And I should've enjoyed the evening
But my fear and doubt won over me
Prom happened five months ago, but it never ceases to make me feel awful.
A Tale

“Of Brownyis and of Bogilis full is this Buke.”
                              —Gawin Douglas.

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
An’ folk begin to tak’ the gate;
While we sit bousing at the *****,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o’Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter,
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses).

O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise,
As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice!
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum,
That frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou was nae sober;
That ilka melder, wi’ the miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;
That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on,
The smith and thee gat roarin fou on;
That at the Lord’s house, ev’n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday.
She prophesied that, late or soon,
Thou would be found deep drowned in Doon;
Or catched wi’ warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthened sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!

But to our tale: Ae market-night,
Tam had got planted unco right;
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely;
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;
Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither;
They had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi’ sangs an’ clatter;
And aye the ale was growing better:
The landlady and Tam grew gracious,
Wi’ favours, secret, sweet, and precious:
The Souter tauld his queerest stories;
The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus:
The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E’en drowned himself amang the *****;
As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,
The minutes winged their way wi’ pleasure:
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.—
Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
And sic a night he tak’s the road in,
As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed;
Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellowed:
That night, a child might understand,
The De’il had business on his hand.

Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet;
Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet;
Whiles glow’rin round wi’ prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares;
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.

By this time he was cross the ford,
Whare in the snaw the chapman smoored;
And past the birks and meikle stane,
Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane;
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn,
Whare hunters fand the murdered bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo’s mither hanged hersel’.
Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll;
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seemed in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou canst mak’ us scorn!
Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil;
Wi’ usquabae, we’ll face the devil!
The swats sae reamed in Tammie’s noddle,
Fair play, he cared na deils a boddle.
But Maggie stood right sair astonished,
Till, by the heel and hand admonished,
She ventured forward on the light;
And, wow! Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion, brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He ******* the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.—
Coffins stood round, like open presses,
That shawed the Dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip sleight
Each in its cauld hand held a light,
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer’s banes in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae a ****,
Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted;
Five scimitars, wi’ ****** crusted;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father’s throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o’ life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi’ mair of horrible and awfu’,
Which even to name *** be unlawfu’.

As Tammie glowered, amazed and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:
The Piper loud and louder blew;
The dancers quick and quicker flew;
They reeled, they set, they crossed, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark!

Now Tam, O Tam! had they been queans,
A’ plump and strapping in their teens;
Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flainen,
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen!—
Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush, o’ gude blue hair,
I *** hae gi’en them off my hurdies,
For ae blink o’ the bonie burdies!

But withered beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags *** spean a foal,
Lowping and flinging on a crummock,
I wonder didna turn thy stomach.

But Tam kenned what was what fu’ brawlie:
‘There was ae winsome ***** and waulie’,
That night enlisted in the core
(Lang after kenned on Carrick shore;
For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perished mony a bonie boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear);
Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.
Ah! little kenned thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi’ twa pund Scots (’twas a’ her riches),
*** ever graced a dance of witches!

But here my Muse her wing maun cour,
Sic flights are far beyond her power;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitched,
And thought his very een enriched;
Even Satan glowered, and fidged fu’ fain,
And hotched and blew wi’ might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a’ thegither,
And roars out, “Weel done, Cutty-sark!”
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke,
When plundering herds assail their byke;
As open pussie’s mortal foes,
When, pop! she starts before their nose;
As eager runs the market-crowd,
When “Catch the thief!” resounds aloud;
So Maggie runs, the witches follow,
Wi’ mony an eldritch screech and hollow.

Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin!
In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin!
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin!
Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane of the brig;
There at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie’s mettle—
Ae spring brought off her master hale,
But left behind her ain grey tail:
The carlin claught her by the ****,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother’s son, take heed:
Whene’er to drink you are inclined,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o’er dear,
Remember Tam o’Shanter’s mare.
Father, this year's jinx rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,
boxes of pictures of people I do not know.
I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,
hold me. I stop here, where a small boy
waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ...
for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy
or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.
Is this your father's father, this commodore
in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile
has made it unimportant who you are looking for.
I'll never know what these faces are all about.
I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began
the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly
as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran
the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me
and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went
down and recent years where you went flush
on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant
to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.
But before you had that second chance, I cried
on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.
Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;
here, with the winner's cup at the speedboat races,
here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,
here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,
running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;
and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept
for three years, telling all she does not say
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.
Owen Phillips Dec 2012
I provoke the rain of Hell
From Heaven high to earth below
There we'll float on gainful spells
We're ready for this world to go
And off to outer space, we're facing
Endless races to the furthest reaches of our teacher, the speaker, the logos of Cosmos
And beyond to distant Quasars,
No phasers, no lasers, weaponry
We're safe with hearts of purity
And naked with our souls we'll seek
The greatest cosmic mysteries

I've always sought and thought unreal
The spacecraft not of stone or steel but
Opened hearts and focused spirits
Woke by times both strange and fearful
Changing basic notions of
What we all say are mind and love

We're through with consumers, they've doomed us
We've moved on
The proof is the truth that all life will soon be gone
We've built and built, killed billions and still
We march toward gold archways which never were real

I can tell others feel it,
They're real and they heal me
Relations, creations, spontaneous meaning
It's all building up to a climactic moment
Of high expectation that we will all blow it
But we were born just so we'd know when the opening
Ceremonies go on for the New Age of Hope

It's outrageous to think of the hate which created this
Darkness and chaos,
(Our God has betrayed us!)
But that's why our savior said
Look the other way,
To meet hate with more hatred
Speeds up the decay

We love the villains, though they **** us by millions
Because they're truly a part of this cosmic cotillion
They can't see the dance while they're
Crashing and sinning
So they can't imagine they're actually IN IT
There's a part and they fit it,
Catalyst for the equipment
Of Salvation:
The nations of women and men
Beginning again
We'll cancel the debt and we'll all become friends
George Andres Jul 2016
Left, right, left, right
Change step march
Heartbeats pounding
with the rhythm
Count cadence count!
1,2,3,4  1,2,3,4
1234! Bam!

Sway backwards,
left, right
Hold her waist
Touch his hand
Pleasing the hormone's rage

Trembling knees
Uneasy eyes
Jealous heart
And lustful smiles

Those are dancing
and here is marching
Look right to the base
and see his handsome face! Hey!
2015 Promenade
Selma Bee Jun 2015
It’s really a quite funny story,
Truth be told.

In middle school,
There were all sorts of dances,
Most of them actually
Fell directly after school.

I think it was more out of convenience for
All the teachers and faculty
Who were needed to come and make sure
Us middle school children didn’t wreak havoc.

Anyhow, I think I went to one
Of those after school dances.

But that never counted to me
As anything more than
A glorified after school activity
That I was doing with all my friends.

See, to me a dance meant
going out,
Buying a new dress and
A matching pair of shoes.

To me,
Anything that you could come
Exactly as you were
Did not count as a dance.

The next year, in eighth grade,
I decided that I wanted to do cotillion.

I’m certain that my one friend
Exclaimed how confused she was at this;
She could not stand the event
And did not understand why I’d willingly join.

But it was never about the details of it.

It was about the idea that I would get to dance
And that I would learn how to dance.

At five years old,
I decided to join ballet,
If for no other reason than
Because my best friend was, too.

I was not ready for ballet
Back then, at the young age of five,
But it may have been good,
It made me realize that I like to dance.

I would always like to dance
Even if I lacked all grace and coordination.

Because I may have had two left feet
And a great tendency to twist my ankles.
But luck would com my way when my dancing partner
Would also have two left feet.

That was really my first dance,
That time at cotillion,
When we were trying to tango,
And we both had two left feet.

I dressed up in a floor length dress,
Pink, with a sheer layer on top,
A solid one beneath,
And two thick straps on top.

So maybe we weren’t the best dancers
And maybe I’m not much better now.

But it was a lot of fun,
And I dressed up all fancy,
And I got to dance with someone,
And my first dance was what I’d wanted.

I had wanted something memorable,
And it was certainly memorable.
Darbi Alise Howe Nov 2012
Crawling on all fours, traffic drags its bleeding body forward.  
Men with collars of lipstick tap tap tap their fingers against steering wheels.  
Time slows, cars inch, passing hands find cigarettes, cigarettes find fire.  
Tap ash tap finds tap pavement.  
This is the unobserved hiatus of daily routines, the dreaded stretch of heaven that separates from and to.  
During such moments of inertia
thoughts drift through open windows
forming a cloud for bargains, regrets, wishes, doubts, prayers, and curses to perform cotillion upon.  
Faster, faster, so quickly now, oh, change partners, switch lanes, spin, oh baby spin, fasterfasterfaster, until differentiation is impossible, until drivers become one with this steel river, until minds make their essential switch that makes home a bearable punishment.  

Someone has broken down.  
Do Not Stop.
They are shunned from the sweeping mob of machinery.  Necks swivel in uniform towards this abomination, how dare they, how DARE they outshine our misery.  Perspiration works its way down backs and pools into leather cracks.  

Will it ever end?
Do we want it to?  

Finally,
regrettably,
the final exit, the last few feet of purgatory.  
We descend into the next inferno where we leap through fiery hoops of interrogation—
yes no it was fine yes okay.  
We are exhausted.  
If only we would have stopped.  
If only we would have hit the brakes and remained in our haven of anxiety and lust and confusion and endless searching.  
Our love affair with traffic can only last so long.
    So we make solemn promises to ourselves to appreciate tomorrow’s,
    to run our fingers along the satin thighs of the freeway,
    to plant a rubber kiss upon the ground.  

How tap long tap until tap five?
John F McCullagh Jan 2012
An immigrant from County Clare
brought to this harsher clime-
Phoebe Prince, an Irish lass,
a gentle heart and mind.

First used, and then discarded
by one boy, then another.-
Object of the mean girl’s scorn
the consummate "outsider"
 
On her last day alive                                                            ­                                                                 ­                           
They hounded her from school.
The girl they called the “Irish ****”
disgraced and played the fool.

Her sister, Lauren, found her body
hanging lifeless in the hall.
Befriended by nobody
Phoebe chose to end it all

And on the day they held her wake
Those monsters held their dance
A debutante cotillion
for a troop of soulless tramps.

She’s buried here in County Clare
because the Ocean's waves
protect her from the harpies
who drove her to her grave
A poem in honor of Phoebe Prince, an immigrant to America who committed suicide in response to relentless bullying.
chimaera Jun 2015
Take her sidereal night,
its darkness
and the shimmer in it.

Draw a co-secant,
a beam,
in your full-light trace.

The script is embedded,
it runs on its own:
see?

A pulse,
myriads of whirling suns,
a blaze within her,

a firmament
for a cotillion,
a constellations' jigsaw.

Her night breathes,
in symbiotic pace
with its aural lover

and, within its velvet,
darkness is an indigo,
drunk on orgastic throb.

15.5.2015
prompt: cosmos [my entry in the poetry contest 2015, in LegendFire.com]
Mary-Eliz May 2017
her morning walk seems
a spiritual experience
head held high
hair coiled on top
silver wisps floating defiantly

she keeps her routine
in enduring manner

some think her air aloof
indifferent

they do not look
into the shimmering eyes
or
notice the serene smile
they do not see
inside her head

where she dances
where the music plays

they only see her lively step
as one to keep pace
with the petite fawn terrier
seeing him
as her only dance partner

they are wrong
she has many partners

she dances with the breeze
she dances with the birds
with the clouds
with the sun
and
with the moon

on these crowded city streets
locked in her memory
duplicated
and
played back
in complete detail

she dances
with the foaming, crashing ocean
and
the verdant mountains  
mist hovering above
she dances
with giant oaks of the forests
and
meadows filled with scarlet, gold,
white, and amethyst wildflowers


many think her lonely


they are wrong
I'm supposed to take a test on Tuesday
about some Bill of Rights, Constitution, founding fathers *******
I've been hearing about this **** for what seems like a never ending river of forever but I'm still failing that test.
I'm supposed to take a test on tuesday about everything I'm supposed to have absorbed from the beginning of September to now, in my political systems class in my senior year of high school
political systems, systems of politics
Can you teach me about our government TODAY
in two-thousand-and-thirteen so I can have
at least some delusional illusion that I know
at least a fraction of what the **** is going on

I should be memorizing each amendment on the Bill of Rights
which was written long enough ago
instead of morning coffee
there'd be lines of blow, legally
my mom, would be billing the hospital for the right to my captivity
if I tried to convince everyone that dancing is good for your ******* soul
after smoking a bowl and doing a line I'd sign on the dotted line
"no man is above or below shaking their ***** until the lights stop to glow"

Am I the only outraged kid in here?
Am I the only person who believes this country's worsened-and if we're learning about our country
put me back in US history because I barely passed my sophomore year
I barely passed the year before that one too
and not because of my report card

I'm supposed to take a test on Tuesday, on the Bill of Rights, and how it applies with the passing of time but if there's one Bill I know that's right, it's my boy Billy
when he gets real silly and stomps his feet to the beat like the street's ******* ground meat and he's the butcher

I'm supposed to take a test on Tuesday, I'm also supposed to go to work at 3
I'm supposed to stay in good shape and not turn in any schoolwork late
and Cotillion's soon so I gotta find a date

I'm supposed to go to college next year to get more knowledge but my mind is still lost somwhere between
I've seen too many scary pink ***** too young
I've felt too many scary pink licks too young
now I always think people are out to get me
so I walk around looking strung out on amphetamines
waiting for the earth to crumble beneath me
So when I was supposed to be taking notes on the Boston Tea Party
Please excuse me if I was a little busy
trying to hold the delicious wishes of dying at bay

So I'm kind of proud to say
I'm ******* alive today
and on Tuesday I'm supposed to take some test
but this, this moment is my very own test
I'm studying to be my very own best
version of a classmate, a student, a friend, a daughter
and someone I can listen to every waking moment
and someone I can stand up to when the right to my free will is challenged
Chris Voss Jul 2014
When he entered the room, she was naked. She sat stripped of her mythology and the bare curves of her hips made his hands shake. He hid them in his pockets like seizures in winter and told himself it was just the morning coffee.

"Jesus Christ..." His jaw slacked and tightened and he waited for a response; something witty like, odd time to pray or not quite, but maybe his cousin or oh, honey, he moved out years ago, but we still get his mail.
But soon waiting gave way to waiting, as waiting is wont to, and things became uncomfortable. Her deadbolt eyes. She blinked in slow motion, no lash out of place, and he felt foolish.

See, he never expected her to be a woman, and he almost said as much, had the look on her face not shut him up beautifully. Besides, at this point he was pretty certain that cities definitely don't speak--not English anyway--and even then, his concrete dialect was, at best, as atrocious as cracked pavement. He lisped with too much wind and not enough asphalt.

He looked around for somewhere to sit but the only chair wasn't even really a chair, it was a stool with a questionable third leg that sat over-turned and tucked in the far corner and he found himself at an impasse. Retrieving it would not only involve taking his hands from their linen hideaways, but she hadn't even offered him a seat and he didn't want to be rude; he being a man of manners with the cotillion lessons to prove it. On the other hand, there was a more-than-decent chance that his knees would buckle at any moment. He cleared his throat.

"May I?" he motioned and crept around her with a weird, dainty tip-toe. He would later reflect on and regret this odd step choice because it was undeniably ladylike, unlike this lady whose face seemed carved from marble and gave nothing away; she just cast her eyes slightly downward. He uprighted the chair that wasn't really a chair and checked the sturdiness of the questionable leg and shrugged in questionable approval and dragged it back to where he was and returned his hands to where they were and felt, aside from the girly walk, that went surprisingly well.

So it was in silence that he was left to sit. Sit and think. Think about small things, trivial ****. He thought about the small stain on his pants and hoped to God it was toothpaste. He thought about the itch in the dead center of his back where he can never scratch without looking like he has a severe case of cerebral palsy. He thought about his pockets, full of trembling leaves that fluttered with spare change winds and hung delicately from his autumn tree arms. He thought about bigger things too, like how if two people on exact opposite ends of the earth simultaneously each dropped a piece of bread, for a brief moment the whole world was just a really big sandwich. But mostly he thought about the difference between hard and mean.

Hard is the bottomless tumblers of American dream fathers, breathing scotch like fire and promises that were only ever half-way held true. But mean... Mean is a different kind of machine entirely. Mean, he realized, is one solid kick in the nuts past hard. Hard is when your ice cream drops mid-lick and falls in the cinematic drama of a-hundred-and-twenty frames per second to the unforgiving pavement, and even though there is a split seconds chance to reach out and catch it, you don't because, let's face it, sticky hands are gross. But mean is the little junior sonofabitch dog that comes a-waddling on in, laps up your deliciously sweet sidewalk treat and stares you right in the face while he does it. Mean makes you realize the sticky fingers would have been worth it. And before he could decide which category this Angel City would fit in, she stood, with a slight smile curling at the corner of her mouth and one hand behind her back. She slinked over to him with snake ankles and reached out and ran her fingers along his jawline and hooked his chin upward and kissed him.

It wasn't the delicate, thin-lipped kiss of embarrassed virgins and ex-stripper-turned-born-again-Christians. It also wasn't the Californication kiss filled with carnal tongue that he might have expected had the idea that she was going to do anything but intimidate the utter **** out of him even crossed his mind. It was somewhere between the two. Between shelter and apocalypse.  Viperous with a tinge of motherly protection (which, actually, gave him some confusing feelings). When she pulled away he felt the slight clink of metal against his teeth.

A bullet. Round and smooth, he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger and watched his fingerprint peel off and mark the lead skin with little, oily mazes. He looked up to her, unsure of what to say or what to make of whatever the hell just went down. She stared silently because, you know, that's her thing and he felt he had to say something because, you know, manners.

"I thought we said no gifts." He laughed. She didn't. He felt like an idiot immediately. Then, like the other half heart of a best friend necklace, she drew from her back a snub-nosed revolver. Her thumb flicked with outlaw elegance and the empty chamber rolled open.

"Let's play a game."
It was all she said. He didn't pay attention to whether she spoke in impeccable English or if the words were lit in the electric neon of Sunset Boulevard. It didn't matter and he didn't care. He didn't even notice when he took the gun and slid the round in until after he spun the chamber and slung it shut. When she lifted his arm without touching him and he felt like he was her marionette. When the snub nose found it's way to his mouth, he was certain of it. The feeling of the metal barrel against his bare teeth made his skin crawl and his stomach turn, yet even still he grinned.

He grinned because he saw his hand and his hand grinned because it wasn't shaking, not anymore.

He grinned and cocked the hammer back.
©2014
Sukanya Basu May 2018
Lyrics written on Church walls
Bashful lurking Lucifer,
Carved glazes of canker crawling on the mead
Drinking vile torments of men
Lucifer hath angel been
Spread wings of human fate
guided men on burlesque dives
through historic and futile rage
Drawing on lost and regained have never been thy aim
For jeopardy in art's name is nothing but a lost game
God and man and Vinci guise
And letters of un-earthly paradise
And decades of poetry sinned
To unmask man through lyrical films
Morte, life, determining naught
Empty pages of science and draught
Realms of here and realms of there
Realms that thy heart found rare
Antonym of fright being scare
Is not what man learnt through time
And there as courage behooves and
Life draws you to her
Death seems close in the arms of beloved
Pain, man's secret armour
bellows courage with a fake accent
Coming of seasons and dawn and light,
Poetic romance fretful sight
World naught ready to love and cherish
Human cans't broil feel
April as thy knows
A heavenly soul of a year,
Brewing rose, carnations and dew drops in time
A certain cotillion towards the other,
A light breathing when eyes met
Beyond the language of the celestial walls
Eve and Adam through bright colour meadows
I see as thy eyelids quiver from haunts of past
And as night descends the maiden shy
With light prance of the lion he prances
Flesh by flesh swoon by temptation
Drops of naive lies
promises of eternity
Battles of Brunanburh
Horses line up to a steady flame
Fishes swim in fleshy rain
Draining mouth of Paris gates
Writing pages of descent
And on with thy fire of the month,
November rose in the wild grass of beams
Battle lost and won it seemed
On another hill a maiden swept her hair
Through rosy gleams and eye of glass
And smiled like the forbidden apple of fate
Jumped like the lion
left in dismay
songs of despair
An orchestra of pain
Nightingale of death bellows of wind
On sunday the fifth he had sinned
she had cried and shown the rose
cigarette and smokes
of nothing proposed
Flesh be thy crime
heart be thy muse
Naughts had been reflected
in thy abuse
Stricken the horror bladder
Rose with dismay
And to **** the canker
in whom the ***** played
Alone within thy celestial walls of God, Goddesses and fate
Questioning thy holy spirit
the mistakes thy made
Entrusted with athenian history
Women bearing dagger
Human sentiments are evil
Lucifer is the rightful dowager
It's him who sheltered blue
Evil is romance
hardly to swoon
The right and wrong and sadness grief
If they see world of poverty
And happiness a myth
And now trumpets of war
And experiences blithe
To see the world anew
whom is right?
If Lucifer the fallen angel saw
what was yet to see
God is a liar and heaven's a greed
Thy stealth steal within bosoms canker
hate, ****, juvenile crime,
Crime is the way
to drive horrors in time
Human history baffles thee!
Social etiquettes and manners of glee
Whom to fool and whom to wrought
The lamb, the tiger a hated must
Angels, demons painted square
whom to whom the battles were?
The right of man to sin and begone
are fated dramas of life and forlorn?
Brew the evil and feed thy good
Awake! Arise! never be fooled!
And sadness a step,
sudden and dark
Thy unending stairs to heaven abased
Lonely as autumn arises and leaves gather
Memories of child and man
Memories of fated hand
Thy walks through
Matured, mind of steel
Anguish concealed
A heavy sigh of a grown mind
Scorns the happy girl
And laughs over her dead pearls
Mind of a grown self
Visits Celestial walls,
The temple, the bed the wrongs
The right is a foolish girl
Inside her body the birth of a new world
the falls the laughs the pain the demands!
The gunshot of life
The circle of hope
And nursing and growing the cherub of flesh
Is they mother nature with a man of crest
The moon as it shines, shows horrors no more
But in thy heart, a maiden sad
To loose all she ever had
But to gain life
and knead love
To love love and to grow above
Lucifer reads bedtime stories
God saves the crown of glory
Life smiled and played along
Death for death
and finding songs
Growing up in lilac storms
She learned to battle and grow a home
Keen on her *** to bottle dreams
Milk and bread is new it seems
Tyranny with a ****** sword
Knives it's prey as it creeps from it's door
But in white she clad and drew the sword at hand
Tears as bows it drew
Battle of ages seen never so shrewd
The good plot for her
The evil shined
Who art evil or good
She painted blind
She called her demons risked her God
She became human is sad of all
Thy maiden story once again read
The man who left
Evil has no name
So good naught trust
for good is thee
Good is evil
That had been set free
Whom to whom
And what to name
Should haunt the grave
or visit a pray
For to pray is a prey
And grave is a paradise
Questions she darted
With wide eyes
I showed thee card where black and white
Rose to fame side by side
God is lucifer
heaven is hell
Man made tricks on walls
For stories to tell
Man is mortal
desires are innate
Soul is thy spirit that lies awake
Death of life is a soul that plots
Stays on Earth in shallowed knots
To be beyond and to see the light
Have naught done that
Life is a sight
Not seen to man, if realised is beyond
To trust in fame is all that is done
Meekly shown courageous sprout
To do good or evil is a judgement about
The religious amenities made by man
To shun Lucifer is yet in thy hand
To pray him is a choice thus
But to prey pray has been man's lust
Again memories squint of thy maid on the meadows
Flesh on flesh haunts thy skin
Shallow breadths and mortal eyes
Rise beyond skies they speak
What sky what ground
What lava and heavenly abode
To grow old in folktales
Aside dusky shores
Man knows all
Man knows good
Good of man
Is a questionable truth
Man knows evil
Man knows crime
Man knows nothing
He is lost in time
Man knows man
is what tale they should
Write on walls instead of evil and good
Evil might harm
And good might ease
But man does both
And later he grieves
For grief hath no church nor temple nor mosque
Grief is inside man's chest
Pumping through his *******
Of Eve's fool and Adam's greed!
Of the canker of the holy grail
Of the lies he feed!
Who art to decipher life beyond life
When life is tormenting
even in it's sight
Who death, desert or leaves the soil
Who plants and grows in thy turmoil
Who loves and cares and makes thy life
Who saves who draws and pushes knives
Who grows and finds peace in thy self
Who plots and fails and satisfies and helps
Who prays and begs and trust in him
Who prays and begs and trusts in sins
What the sins, what the truth
Human beings are born aloof
To end to grow to die or to be born
Man hath no power to tell of or scorn
Man is a flick
Man is a pride
Man draws wars
Man lies
Man brings flesh
Man grows thee
Man dies tomorrow
Man is me.
Brent Kincaid Apr 2015
If I were pink
What would you think?
If I were blue
Would you be too?
If I were green
Would you be mean?
If I were yellow
Would we still be mellow?
If I were black
Would you attack?
If I were brown
Would you turn me down?
If I were beige
Would we still engage?
If I were heliotrope
Could we go elope?
If I were vermillion
Could we go to a cotillion?
If I were maroon
Would you buy me macaroons?
If I were aubergine
Could we go to Dairy Queen?
And if I were cerise
Would your affection cease?

Brent Kincaid
4/7/2015
Agatha Prideaux Apr 2020
Secrets of Wysteria flow in the vessels of my brain
And so I do not hear, nor comprehend the calling of my thought’s train
Vowing to never be held again in constrain
Eradicating the rotten fingers pointing to my disdain

Muses of bruises, callouses, and roses
Excuses the clueless, hung in ruin’s nooses

Flagitious tongue sharpens itself with sprawling centipedes
Rusted teeth from perilous mandibles bleed as it feeds
On the oozing, ****** veins of the wicked ****** as it pleads
Maybe these are too much for one’s avaricious needs?

Mindful, careful, piercing the syringe of refrain on plump flesh
Yeuking as the substance flows on blood so raw and fresh

Amid all, the past and future gather in Sheol’s pavilion
But missing is the presence of present in emblazing vermillion
Yet fleetly missed as the siren descanted her composition
Somber statues of ivory pretense witness with volition
Saints and snakes tear each other’s throats in a languish cotillion.
Day 9 of #NaPoWriMo 2020. No prompt for today, but I tried making a certain type of poem---acrostic poems. These spell out phrases or words with the first letter of each line of the piece. Enjoy reading!
Zyrah Samar May 2014
i adore her,
every part of her being—
both the parts she is proud of
and those that she keeps hidden
her wit and sweetness
seems like a cherry on top of an ice cream
that makes her even more
beautiful to my eyes.

i’ve liked him since that
19th of February
during our rehearsal for a cotillion
"Your hands feel cold. Don’t be nervous", he said.
i smiled and felt the warmth on my cheeks
he’s always been my inspiration
and my strong tower.

i wish i could finally
tell her how much i love her.

i don’t think i’ll ever have
the courage to tell him i love him.
It is     dawn again in the periphery.
   Slowly beings a rehearsal.

A furious want only brought
the tint of the sky down to its last trinket.
Glides over air – resigns under dissonant skies.
First angle: tiptoe. I admire your machines.
   Second: a song for no one to hear but your presence
          my adulation sings with.
   You are a farewell for no one.

The cotillion undone under pirouette of Suns.
Music still for the mouth to bloom,
awakened at the edge of the world
that tastes nothing like metal.

Housed in reliquary assumed by the hands,
   committed to duty:
  contain the coryphée – body revolving, breath held to count,
  how many days expire to bring

back    the  black of   night.
Civet Wright Mar 2017
Reclusive turtle soloing about its ribcage for one bestie' tendency.

After spent the night in its master's clink full of candelabra with Earthlings, the turtle doesn't want to go to thine torturous awry cotillion where everyone is fumbling for the right words.

It is happier to mate with the bestie while all the misnomers vibrating as if they would penetrate into the soul lucidly. Seeking gratification by every frottage and endless non-penetrative ***, whispering straightforward colloquial language became a morbid fascination.

Beastie frighten and enthralled the turtle with Sigillum Dei like riffs from decades of its polytheistic worship, machinations and machinations of coercive persuasions unlike crowdy psychopathies who pay no heed to propaganda and their mutual ******* provoked by **** star personality taxonomy and *** toy fabrication.

Turtle caused beastie a impairment of memory because of its anonymity and disruption of beliefs.

Falling in love with you like seeing someone else dresses in my skin. What I want to do to you is systematically indoctrinate you through torture techniques.
Brent Kincaid Oct 2017
I tried so hard to be kind to you
To excuse the stupid things you do
But something are beyond recall
And deserve no sympathy at all.
Your heartfelt desire to be seen
As some kind of forgiving queen
That lets you give a free pass
To a horrid political horse’s ***
Puts you in a category of shame
And slurs get hooked to your name.

Your a *******, a dufus an a fool
And the little you learned in school
Hasn’t kept stupidity from your door.
You have no idea what your mind is for.
Thinking should not be an hobby
Like picking up stuff from Hobby Lobby
Then dropped when the next cotillion looms.
Brains should not be hidden in back rooms.

You must do research and not believe
The words of shysters or you will grieve
And not assume all is well like fools do
Or you will take us to ruin with you.
When people like you don’t resist
Crooks win. Freedom will cease to exist.
You think you are being kind to villains
And refuse to realize they will **** children
And the old and the non-Caucasians.
That includes Mexicans and Asians.

Yet you tell us stories that they are nice men
And ignore that bigotry has taken hold again.
You sicken me with the dread of seeing
Our future becoming hateful to human beings.
You learned how to emotionally kiss ***
Back in some lost time in your past
And it has turned you into the kind of soul
He let ****** and Mussolini assume roles
That murdered and stole nationally
And took their countries to hell, ultimately.
And that, polite person, is why I call you dufus.
Now you are doing the same thing to us.
Caroline Shank Jun 2022
Song

I am a metaphor for your loneliness.
Rigged out in sunshine and crowned
with blue skies I am your looked for
ticket to the cotillion.  You never
saw me before the imprimatur
of poetry.

I want to tell you the stories of
my life.  The daring deeds. The
mistakes that you hear in my
voice as a prelude to love.

I am the curlique of madness
that tempts you from the tropic
of yesterday. We were young
and wanton in blue jeans and
rolled hems.  I wore a shirt
emblazoned with your name.

You were perfection in gray
pants and pink shirts.  It was
the 50s and the air sang to us
carrying the music that we
knew as love songs.

We were young then unknown
to each other. Our old souls
were songs as yet unwritten.
Do I confuse you with my
symbols of forgotten requests?

Don't try on my song.   I never
wanted you to.  I am here in
the vocabulary of mistakes.
We cannot find the meaning
In the experience we each had.

Don't look for me to sign.
I am alone in my recent grief.
Don't wait for a sign that
has lost its true North.

You send me flowers which
do not arrive, candy which i
cannot eat.

Tomorrow dies,

as unwritten

song.


Caroline Shank
June 14, 2022
sash sriganesh Jul 2019
It was Donna Darling’s annual dinner party
A Cotillion approved eatery
Six spoons and six forks
The wrong one, and all the glares one bore
And then waddled in Miss Pillsbury
Her stumpy feet too short to
Do anything but waddle
Uninvited she was
As she always was
Squelching her way
through the narrow doorway.
As fourteen perfectly styled heads
Shuffled their feet under the table.

Boom! Clash!
Six spoons crashing
Six forks attacking
Poor old lady Judith’s knee
As she groaned in pain.
Donna scratching her head
Eyes darting through her invite list
Top-to-bottom, Top-to-bottom
Screech! Went the chair,
Scratching Donnas hand polished marble floors
Like nails on a chalkboard.

Oh, and what she did next,
Almost sent Donna to her upstairs bedroom
To pop some unprescribed ******
As the stout woman grabbed soup
with her chubby hands
And started gulping it down
Before it ran through her fingers.

Frazzled Donna tried, oh she tried
To salvage the integrity
Of her fancy dinner party
Unfortunately, at the moment
it was running down the table
From Miss Pillsbury’s double chin.
Swooosh! Went old lady Judith
As she skated across the marble
Like an Olympic figure skater
Only to crash into Donna’s perfectly organized
stainless steel kitchenware.

Donna ran out screaming and crying
Nobody’s seen her since.
And as for Miss Pillsbury,
I’d be surprised if she noticed any of it
FunSlower May 2021
You were number five in forty-eight
But surely you’re one in a million.
Warmest eyes entice duelling incisors.
Wow! Maybe it’s one in a billion.

I should’ve been scared for my life that night,
As Cerulean fractured Vermilion.
But you were there with a hand I’d never held
And Bravery that wouldn’t be felled.
Revelling in a scent you’d never smelled;
Incense for reverence outside The Pavilion.

I’d do it all again, you know?
Melt the Snow and steal the show,
To be there with you, toe to toe,
Beyond the darkest dance at the brightest cotillion.
Deck the halls with boughs of Holly.

Have you ever found yourself dazed and confused,
a mile outside your comfort zone?
If your muse is as cool, calm & collected as mine,
It’s safe to say you’ll never feel alone.

— The End —