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Everything is such fun in the beginning,
when it’s new and undiscovered.
i’ll try almost anything.

What is meant by almost?
All these stupid sick **** roles we play,
all this pretending, why?

i want to believe there’s something
behind the curtain
besides a windowless stone wall

Something inexplicable
his/her majesty of everything/
living/dead/never existed.

William Blake said, “Either be a poet or a painter.
Being both muddies audiences, and discredits one or the other.”
Actually, Blake didn’t say that. i am lost.

is it possible to love after what has happened?
the rage, hurt, disappointment of betrayal.
my ex still stalks

as recently as two mornings ago,
all her exaggerations, over-reactions, fury.
Why so desperate to return to crime scene?

An admission of her own guilt?
Excessive compulsive wound licking (psychogenic alopecia)?
Another excuse for getting drunk?

When we waited for the elevator going down
You said, “Let’s just get this over with.”
i understood completely.

i, who worships my own death.
i, who ****** on my own grave.
i, who gets bored faster than speed of light.

i, who suspects killing around every corner.
i, who sleeps restless.
i, who worries.

i, who loves women.
i, who does not understand women.
i, who is a woman.

i, who bangs the dude in L.A. to advance my career.
i, who is a nobody.
i, a man with no place to stand.

i, who belongs to a family of
blustering flirts, flatterers,
kidders, thieves.

We sit at the table,
monkey-wrenching hand over fist lives.
Forget about the eyes.

Watch the fingers.
Don’t listen to the speeches.
Words are intentional distractions.

Where’s your wallet?
Gypsies? No, we’re not gypsies,
more upper-crusty, yes, very well-connected secrets.

Do the names Dante, or Cervantes, or Nabokov mean anything to you?
No, none of them are our kin,
but we know people who know people,

infidelities in very high places.
All i’m saying is,
once you reach a certain level,

we’re all family.
i will make success happen,
with or without you.
Al Apr 2017
1:46 am
You wake up and roll over in bed
I ask you to light me a cigarette
but I fall back asleep before you can hand it to me

5:00 am
My alarm clock goes off
the ring is a recording of you screaming that we thought was hilarious
I pull on yesterday's pants and your hoodie
You kiss my wrist before I leave

5:30 am
I get back into bed before my mom realizes I was gone
Curl up in my own bed and go back to sleep

7:53 am
I'm already 2 minutes late for my first hour class
I take my medication before I leave
I kick myself for not taking the cigarette at 1:46 am

10:59 am
You text me three times during my math class,
the teacher hates me for it
"AL."
"Guess what."
"I brought you sandwiches from your favorite restaurant in town."
I love that you end every text with a period

11:20 am
You also brought me a *** brownie

12:30 pm
The brownie kicks in
I can't focus on the documentary about gentrification in India
All I can think about is how your hair looked like ****
I go to the bathroom so I can call you and tell you
You call me an *******
I almost tell you I love you before I hang up
But I bite my tongue

1:04 pm
I walk right out of my sixth hour class
in the middle of a lecture
Because everyone's acting like the fact that Rodion is mentally ill
somehow discredits his theories
And I know you read "Crime and Punishment" last year
and I want to know if you're an extraordinary man

1:22 pm
You get your sober friend Ryan to drive us to the theater
for a 2:10 showing of boss baby
you sit in the back seat with me
my eyes are glued to the way your fingers dance with the cigarette
I think you're the most beautiful person in the world
I think that I love you

1:25 pm
I think that the last person I thought those things about
convinced me I wasn't worth love.
And showed me just how cruel love can be
I don't know if I trust you
if I'm being honest.

2:04 pm
You buy me popcorn
and I buy your movie ticket
Somebody calls us ******* when we kiss in the lobby
Neither of us notice until Ryan points it out later

3:48 pm
Boss Baby's over
Neither of us notice because we're kissing
The theater is empty except for me, you, Ryan, and the employee
Ryan tells us we're gay

3:50 pm
By the time we get outside
We're yelling at each other
I'm telling you to stop talking **** about my friends
You're telling me to stop letting people push me around
I'm screaming a paragraph of information you should know
when you interrupt me with a kiss
Quick
Passionate
Beautiful
It only makes me angrier
Are you stupid?
This isn't a ******* romcom, Pete.

4:00 pm
We don't talk the rest of the car ride home
But we pass a cigarette between the two of us
and it's like we made up

5:13 pm
My friend Andrew picks me up
His car smells like ****
I don't say goodbye to you before I go
but I leave a lighter by your car keys
because I know you'll forget one if I don't.

5:57 pm
Andrew keeps picking up more and more people
He says we're "pre-gaming" for the party tonight
He lets me borrow hair product and cologne
Not so I can impress you, of course
Just so I can look good

6:00 pm
I suddenly realize
that out of 6 people in this car
I'm the only one with a ******
I ask to go to the party early

7:14 pm
I send you a text
"I'm here, motherbitch"
Bring me a hoodie. It's cold."
I almost tag "I love you" on the end
but I settle for
"P.S. you're gross and smell bad."

7:16 pm
You respond
"I'm bringing the blue one."
"Hope it'll cover up that ugly shirt you were wearing earlier."
We both know that it's your shirt
"P.S. you have weird leg hair."
"P.P.S. I think the Boss Baby qualifies as an extraordinary man, by Rodion's definition. He seems above the law. I dunno though. Think on it."
Sometimes I think you're a genius

8:37 pm
You're over an hour late
I'm cold
I yell at you the minute you step out of your car
You yell at me for being so selfish
I tell you to never say that about me again
You know that that's a touchy subject

9:22 pm
We haven't spoken since we got in that fight.
I've been drinking a little more than I should

10:10 pm
I gave one of your exes a lap dance
I wink at you over his shoulder
I want all of your attention,
your eyes glued to me.
I want you to forget the rest of the room exists

10:44 pm
I throw up in the bushes by your car
It's unlocked, so I lay down inside
I think about the look in your eyes,
half anger, half adoration.
I think about how I want to tell you that I love you.
I think about how the last person I said that to convinced me
that I don't deserve love.
I think that maybe she had a point.

12:16 am
I don't know when I fell asleep
but when I woke up,
you were sitting in the car next to me.
You aren't smoking, but you're playing with a match.
I think you look beautiful in this light,
just the flame from the match
and the odd shadows that come from inside the house.
You tell me we need to talk.
I tell you to grow a pair and talk to me when we're sober.
You remind me that we're rarely sober at the same time.

12:18 am
I tell you that I'm sorry I'm so mean to you.
You say you know that I don't mean it.
I tell you that I don't want to be another her.
I don't want to treat you the way my ex treated me
because you deserve better than that.
I tell you that you deserve better than me.
You give me an odd look but don't say anything.
I realize that your eyes aren't bloodshot.

12:31 am
I ask you to drive me to the high school
because I realize that I left my car there
earlier today when I decided to cut class.
As you drive
I realize that you never fixed your hair.
I realize that everything about you is messy
and that the bags under your eyes are just getting worse.
I also realize that I think you're the most beautiful person in the world.

12:40 am
When we got to the high school we didn't talk for awhile.
I didn't get out of the car.
You didn't ask me.
We don't look at each other for awhile
but our fingers keep brushing against each other.
I was supposed to be home 40 minutes ago.

12:41 am
You look at me and I realize what you're gonna say.
I can see it in your eyes.
"Al, I just want you to know..."
I know what happens next.
You're going to say that you love me
that you think I'm beautiful
that I'm your best friend
that you want to spend all your free time with me
that you think maybe you'd wanna marry me someday?
Ryan told me you've been telling him these things lately.
I look you in the eyes, trying to stop myself from crying.
"Seriously? Grow the **** up, Pete." I snap.
You don't say it.

12:42 am
I wish I was a better person.
I wish we'd met before she ****** me up.
I wish I could tell you I love you.
I wish you would stop laughing.

12:43 am
You kiss the inside of my wrist,
and I want to smack you but I don't.
Just before I leave your car,
I grow the **** up and look you in the eyes.
"I think you're the best thing that's ever happened to me."
You look shocked that I said something like that.
I know that you're an extraordinary man.

1:46 am
We're still in the high school parking lot.
I've given up on going home.
I haven't stopped apologizing for every ****** thing I've ever done.
You haven't stopped kissing each of my burnt fingertips in turn.
I ask you to light me a cigarette
but I fall asleep before you can hand it to me.
You're gross and I hate you.
Rebecca Gismondi Feb 2016
two MTA

workers play invisible baseball across platforms at Union Square

the runs in my tights mimic the skyscrapers
whose marks I see across the black sky from the rear

window while he ***** me in the backseat of his Audi

an alley in Brooklyn,
the threat of a subway slasher,
the likelihood of getting lost,

but the questioning by tourists for direction

if I say “I am one of you”, it

discredits my memories here:

[pumpkins on 34th in July
kisses in bathtubs in Meatpacking
top of the Whitney]

but I am not (yet) one of you:

impatient drivers,
L train riders,
rainbow bagel obsessers

I still feel a hand grip my throat when walking down 5th
and throw my bones off the Chelsea Pier
before I spend 11 hours wondering why I haven’t yet committed myself to you.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2017
becoming bored of the: what came first, the chicken or the egg? i had to ask a similar question: what came first, the letter δ, or the digit 6?

the only reason why philosophy books
take so much time to read,
is because,
of all literary traditions,
               philosophy books extoll
a need to allow re-reading,
  and no, not a re-reading of the omni-
reading: the sigma / the entire
work -
              but passages of a work -
philosophy books take such a long time
to read, because one is forced to
reread certain passages several times,
if not the nadir-minimum of at least
twice....

notably? perhaps one of many examples
(and i was serious that
heidegger's being & time
  and kant's critique of pure reason
are, reasonably, worth 2 years of your
life to read through, and several
other non-philosophical books
in between...
      yes, poetry is a grand aid when
reading philosophy -
   notably due to his "
agoraphilia",
and its love for sparing the eyes
from straining themselves in
the fudge of tight-knit paragraphs):
that said: the elders should read
either newspapers or poetry,
while the young, with their hawk-eyes
the deluge of claustrophilic
sentencing...
          funny... we hear more of phobias
than of philias...
    last time i checked, our society
entombed only one philia,
among many phobias...
        you know the philia, it begins with
the letter p-;
           odd, isn't it?
                         to fathom a rainbow range
of possible phobias,
     and disrespect a possiblity for
what's devolved in etymological terms
    from greek, i.e.?
  how philias are understood in english:
quirks... eccentricities.
england and its people is a nation
of eccentricities, any russian can tell you
that... you don't even have to cite
     the neo-tsar of the current year;
a less pleasant ascriptive-noun /
       denoting? a, bunch of ******* weirdos!
(yes, the comma implies a quick cascade
of utterance - like ******* a
                            shoelace of spaghetti).
the example though,
   rereading aphorism no. 93 (ponderings V) -
what does reconstitute man
     as *animal rationale
rather than
firmly establishing him as **** sapiens?
well... for a **** sapiens
there must be a deus insapiens -
                   for a wise man, a mad god;
but beyond the notion of god...
would it not be easier, as aphorism 93
suggests invoke a trinity of concepts?
  no "wise" man discredits god,
  whether in idea, or whether in existence,
or when in idea in non-existence -
    because isn't that what atheists provoke?
namely that god "is": in idea in non-existence,
existence per se, cannot be an idea,
since in invokes the 5 senses
      rather than the 1 non-sense (thought),
simply, i can't grasp existence as an idea,
but i can grasp the existence of x
as an idea, since the mechanics of "an" idea
is to treat it as non-existent, and therefore
requiring me to think about it:
and since nature doesn't allow vacuums -
what could possibly fill the nature of
man, if not the ontological construct of
the existing-"non"-existent god?
    what? some hot chocolate and a cookie jar?!
that's beside the point...
     reducing man from the status
of **** sapiens into a state of
     animal rationale opens our demand
for the original status "quo",
that man work from the foundation of
qua categorised animal rationale
and moving to the status of **** sapiens,
which, by so doing, avoids
the burden of presupposing oneself
as **** sapiens, and "re-inventing"
the wheel, and crafting the posit for
                                        a deus insapiens.
the aphorism does suggest that we
are breeding an animal,
                      an animal of genes,
              rather than a human of memes,
for "man" to attain the status
   of **** sapiens from the origin
of animal rationale - is to also claim that
the current claim of "man" as
     **** sapiens reduces a "god" to
be categorised as deus insapiens
  (as stressed by the emotionally infantile
pressure: ******* built a pyramids!
   oh... so looking at a mountain from
a distance wasn't good enough?) -
but categorising "man" as striving for
the status of **** sapiens from the origins
of the already well versed
                    atheistic demand
  for the animal in man, rather than
the man in the animal...
             who could not be persuaded
to allow the striving of a "god"
              from the confines
  of animal rationale ut deus insapiens
into the existential-"zoo"
            of **** sapiens ut
                                         deus sapiens
?
can that question even range into
  asking whether **** est deus
ut deus est man - and that this whole existence
has an omni-spaien dimension
  with a ?, given that the big bang was
not ? remark, but an ! -
    a question is hushed
into philosophy (murmur), while awe
and fancy and daring shouts! explodes!
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
it really never remains in the hands of shakespeare, that's for schoolchildren ridiculed by rubrics of language arithmetics, the placebos of their day & age, transmuted into the current state of affairs... no, poetry properly recognised is what it always was, and i know mine will never be... i concede the inability to capture the hogmanay spirits (my new year always began with the ushering in of autumn anyway) - and that people will always congregate above all else, in pauper or kingly attire over a song like robert burn's auld lang syne than some pompous recitation of hamlet, and if i can be the person who peers into this vase of irritability made consummate in periodical fashion, i will be the first, if not the last, to make due, of the verses written for song, and verses written for the long: forgot. seems to me, that shakespeare is no match, however much his genius is ornamented with countless revisions and reinterpretations, for a single effort overshadows the man, and auld lang syne does just that: it credits the work, but by popular consensus, discredits the man, as is well known, that shakespeare "didn't exist"... which is what happens, when you leverage a perfection in a work, like a god's undertaking, who left no signature, with only his work being respected, the man behind it is left abandoned, history speaks nought of him, the work remains, but only as a remnants of a man... which is why it's hard to contend, for a verse of communal warmth that auld lang syne imbues... you will not find a crowd's worth of shakespearean recitations, no king nor pauper alike in the graft of song upon the harsh paved streets as the bell-tower strikes the hour count to pass midnight past eve into the day of: welcoming the end of yesteryear; for all the actors that have spoken, the people speak first, foremost, and they don't speak shakespeare first, they speak robert burns first; and no word of truth or lie, could ever turn into song, even if written by shakespeare or not... oh this mindless craft, from greece of said, to scotch of sang, there is barely a room for effort in mindlessly avoiding the two: make amends, take to choosing either plot, but choose either, than the meddling middle-man amends of the crude antics of keeping to rhyme!

i love 'em, esp. the natives born,
the jingle and the jive -
i love them because i love
their stale - their dublin burnt
amber of a pint's worth
of guinness - and yes:
i'm not a real shamrock fan,
neither are ye -
  hibernian can become siberia
for all i care...
  but i love them with a hint
of tease -
   their catholicism is like
greek orthodoxy -
  they have to stress their
irish in the plotline -
odd to see the nuance though,
that the transgender movement
accelerated into commotion
when the unearthing of
the *nag hammadi
library happened
in 1945... suddenly every single
******* word is sacred...
    r. d. laing in his **** of paradise,
oh ****: bird of paradise
knew - turn the one inside out,
then turn the other inside out,
and attempt to meet in the middle -
what a, strange "coincidence"!
i'll have to r.e.m. this *******,
just to be sure...
  love the irish, but coming from
a ******* catholic background myself,
and not buying into the jesus
myth i'm starting to:
   i'll luv ya, as long as aye tease ya;
and so it was, a stalemate over
a pint of dublin's finest
                           charcoal amber lure.
Yenson Sep 2019
Let them of the anti-semite, anti-monarchist and anti-progressive tans
concentrate on that lone man to show the anodyne bullying of theirs
for an election coming soon and sure as hell they are going to lose it
so better have your fun showing peoples power against one lone man
that's far as your power reaches for whats more important is beyond
they say the leader is a superannuated student good at basic rabble
the common room politician saving the world on impossible dreams
tax the rich till revenues fall to nothing as they all flee city and towns
spend money we don't have till we twin with Venezuela and frown
sow discords and division and call it peoples power while you stink
full of ***** tricks and murky deeds is not grown up politics for many
many means all not the neons of momentum that bully and discredits
its about fairness, justice, cooperation not hating and discriminating
do as you like, call it power the people know you're just sad jokers
cheating lying incompetent paranoid agitators incapables unfit to rule
calling your childish immatured envy and jealousy revolution it is not
so better stick to what you're good at helping scums and pond-lives
live on state hand-outs , welfare rather than encourage them to work
blame the wealth creators and the successful s for everything wrong
pick on progressive tans and call them traitors because they're woke
spread your poisons all over the communities and call Tories enemies
better enjoy your networking and destroying the life of a single man
whose crime was to believe in hard work and earning not stealing
For another Election is coming soon and sure as hell you gonna lose
and because of me most people have seen your evil spiteful under-belly and they have seen how you twist and lie and they don't like
what you stand for
Better gather the momentum now for you sure as hell are losing
poetryaccident Nov 2018
The bridge is one of many
away from walls hung with chains
restricting natures that will vary
by something more than standard
partitions of the measured
these boxes set to manage
suffocating the imprisoned
seeking escape to arches

a span built from spectrums
diversions of the binate
contrasting two inversions
some cannot imagine
the steps echo loudly
distracting those who relish
the passage now discredits
order based on standards

somewhere towards the middle
we’ll dally at that moment
relish the found oneness
discovery as a bonus
by gender or attraction
these spans on which to travel
stride the rainbow aura
to find where souls are valid.

© 2018. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20181103.
The poem “Rainbow Aura” was prompted by the questions:  What bridges have you crossed?  Which bridge would you like to cross?  What would you say about bridges in a world of walls?
Escape sparked the San Quentin Six into venturing a mock of game
aboard baited *** planes, **** salty licks to bleached rock of blame
that discredits amplified modulation over high-volt shock of shame
to knock men in head-long falls through a hair-tressed lock of lame
what diverts itself and avoids mediocrity decorating a walk of fame
'cause the yeast that lets crap rise, rises up the high-rising yeast ****
as it engages ***-end-production goals of our U.N.'s 666 beast third
while flora ****-shoved pushes eastward a slower-flappin' feast bird
mechanized to turn the liveliest northern Iraqi into a deceased Kurd
to be denigrated by renegade steers from a previously-released herd
that obey commandin' blither in the form of a together-pieced word
given by ol' Plum Island ****-ups whereat cats stung & bees purred
cmp Oct 2020
eeny, meeny, miny woe
sacrifice done right recites hypocrisy
sacrifice by the book entwines blind faith
sacrifice in vain discredits repercussion
sacrifice without leverage set fool's errand
anew-woe
Escape sparked the San Quentin Six into venturing a mock of game
aboard baited *** planes, **** salty licks to bleached rock of blame
that discredits amplified modulation over high-volt shock of shame
to knock men in head-long falls through a hair-tressed lock of lame
what diverts itself and avoids mediocrity decorating a walk of fame

— The End —