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Nolan Higgins Jul 2016
And all your heros are gone,
but you refuse to take off the mask.

A loudmouth, a capitalist,
with greasy hair and a golden toothpick,
he is your enemy
he is your oppressor and
he sits upon a throne of coal and blood
with armed security
and a nation built for him,
to protect him and his money,
a police state, pat downs on the corner,
murdered in the street,
your daughters gotta eat.

He grows fatter and fatter still,
he loves complacency,
he loves contentment,
he invests heavily in both.

He knows we are strong,
he knows we are many,
he knows he must divide us to win,
he knows we're his greatest weapon,
so he created Fox News,
he created TMZ,
stealthily,
we didn't even notice,
he created NPR and KVIE,
he gave them masks that look like ours.
They look poor,
they look starved,
they look like us, but they have a different master.

Our master is the earth,
our master is our coworker, our neighbor, our mailman,
our dishwashers, our bus drivers, our minimart clerks.

Our masters are not the TV,
our masters are not the radio,
our masters are not the New York Times,
they are not National Geographic,
they are not BP,
they are not our principals, our administrators,
our policemen, our CEOs, our investors, our bankers,
our insurance providers,
these people hate us,
they hate us because they can't squeeze blood from a stone,
and
the rivers are running dry,
the factories are standing still,
the people, our masters and our friends,
they're in the streets,
they're shouting "BLACK LIVES MATTER"
they're shouting "NO JUSTICE NO PEACE"
"NO MORE WAR FOR OIL"
"**** THE POLICE"
"DOWN WITH THE 1%"

and soon
and soon,
The False Gods will grow so fat
and we'll have nothing left to eat but them,
and on that day we'll sit down to dine
and it won't be civilized and it won't be pretty,
their blood, our blood, will feed the rivers and their flesh will feed our hungry children and their money will burn and warm our chilled bones but we can't wait,
we can't wait for this to happen because everyday they grow stronger,
we grow weaker and the river becomes dryer.

The Bourgeois is our enemy,
they say 'All Lives Matter'
they say 'Work Hard and Your Dreams Will Come True'

BUT THEY LIE
Ugo Nov 2012
Naked pictures of God on my nightstand,
Dry bones of Moses painted on my button down shirt screaming,
“to be or not to be” is not an English word.
In the daze of the thoughts of Neurology, I saw a man kick a bucket full of Starbucks giftcards down the avenue street. He screamed in pain as he watched the bucket tumble and roll down the street, blessing every Bohemian with a slight cold.

Naked pictures of God on my nightstand,
I dreamt about a land before man where the Oxygen that sprang from the pores of flowers
sang a sweet death. Where dishwashers are saints, for afterall, man will not be if not for food.
Where books are written not to be read, but for the sake of Orange trees that will grow in the future.
I once wore a poker face to a funeral and laughed at the man in the casket because the souls he had underneath him were two left feet.

*We all once had naked pictures of God on our nightstands but lost it after Einstein  
Lost the fried chicken war of 1812 to Isaac Newton.
"Closer attention to the character of our age will, however,  reveal an astonishing contrast between contemporary forms of humanity and earlier ones..." --Friedrich von Schiller, "On the Aesthetic Education of Man"

"They asking how he disappear and reappear back on top
Saying Nas must have naked pictures of God or something"---Nas, "Loco-Motive"
softcomponent May 2014
Called in sick to work, disappoint the boss, *** of a terrible ***** hangover I framed as the flu.

'I've got the cold-body-shivers and a bucket next to my bed. I'd be no help to you, trust me.' Thankfully, one of the friendlier dishwashers agreed to work the shift in my absence. My hangover eventually plateaued into one of those fried-brain poetic calms, where you're pretty sure that terrible habit of yours shaved a few minutes or days from your life, and yet you're in some sort of involuntary (yet accepted and mostly secretly-desired) state of meditation and trance with the world. People walking past speak of strange, complex lives, with their own problems, their own triumphs, romances, fears, and aspirations.

Two young college-boys, dashing, laugh with each other at Habit Coffee. My debit card stopped working for some strange reason, with the machine reading 'insufficient funds' as the cause, and yet I managed to check my balance via online application, and I still have a solid $15.86 available so something is clearly wrong. I explain this to the baristas at Habit, and the girl understands my first-world plight, gives me a free cappuccino as a result, and I sit there at the clearest panoramic window overlooking the corners of Yates and Blanshard thankful for the kindness and finish Part One of Kerouac's Desolation Angels (Desolation in Solitude).

*****, echw. I spat at the brink of ***** above my ***** toilet seat, perhaps the more unhealthy fact-of-the-matter is that I somehow managed to keep it down. So it rots away my stomach and eats away at my liver. Disgusting. Although the prior stupor was quite nice.

On my way to the Public Library (where I sit now), some girl with a summer-skirt was unbeknownst of the fact that it had folded somehow at the back and as she ran for the parked 11 (Uvic via Uplands), everyone could see her thonged *** and they all looked back, forth, back, in *****-awkwardity (I included) wondering what was ruder: telling her? or just watching her spring away? I think I heard someone make a quip remark about it, and yet glanced away and forward as to seem unaroused (their partner was with them, holding hands and all, avoiding the lumpy desire and lust that always appears in short bouts during moments like that).

I need some sort of adventure, tasting the potential of existence as I called in sick to work and immediately felt better once the shadow it cast was delivered from the day. I think of Alex and Petter, with their motley crew of savages, riding highway 101 toward San Francisco. Last I heard, they had stopped over in Portland and perhaps had said hello to our friend Tad in the area. I wish I could have gone, felt the road glow in preternatural beauty and ecstatically bongo'd every breath. I haven't felt the true excitement of freedom and travel in so very, very long. Always, the thought of debt and labour. That's the niche I've crawled into for the time being, and I owe a lot to the friends who wait (without hate, without anger) for me to pay them back. I have some sort of shameful asceticism in the way I work now, as if I cannot just up and quit as I may often do, because I'm doing it for the friends who kindly (perhaps, dumbly) propped me up with coin. Even if most of it goes to an insatiably hungry MasterCard Troll living under a bridge of self-immolating sadnesses and post-modernisms, at least my fridge is full of food.

I lost my passport anyways, they would have stopped me at the Peace Arch and turned me back to Canada without exception. That's a modern border for you, there isn't much room for kindness. Just pragmatism.

*****, terrible, clean-cut pragmatism.

That house, at 989 Dunsmuir, the place I call home in the Land of the Shoaling Waters, is exceptionally lonely on days like this, even with Jen there reading her Charles Bukowski and offing a few comments about the gratuitous ******* oft-depicted in the book. I feel trapped, at times, by all those machinations I so deftly opposed as a teenage anarchist. In principle, I still oppose them. Most intensely when they trap me, although the World of Capital has successfully alienated me as a member of the proletariat work-force and somehow twisted my passion into believing that the ways of economy and rat-race are just 'laws of nature.' If this is true, which I believe for pragmatisms sake they are (*****, terrible, clean-cut pragmatism), there really is no such thing as liberty, and what we have called 'liberty' is nothing more than a giant civilised liability within which we are all guilty until proven guiltier. Yes, because I owe it to myself and to the landlord.

I realize, often, the endless love-hate relationship with existence that one calls 'life.' It seems undeniably true that everyone is in this same jam, secretly loving something, and at the same time secretly hating it. The distinction between 'love' and 'hate' quickly becoming redundant when they are found together drinking champagne at the dusty corner-table of the most indescript and ugly bar in the alley of eternal psychology.

My back hurts, my brain
clicks, it's all a little
melancholic; trapped,
finicky, yet calm,
hopeful, excited, and
real. About everything


all

at once.

How can you write like a beatnik in an age of eternal connectivity? Just keep writing messy, weighted passages, whine-and-dine frustration, and cling on to dear life as if it were better in a lottery ticket? Dream of a rucksack revolution, ask yourself how you're not brave enough to be a Dharma ***? Would you not question your motives in rebellion, keep yourself at arms-length for sake of self-hatred, and posture yourself on the sidewalk insisting it's not pretentious?

Ah, all the vagueness and all the creeps, all the I-guess-I'm-happy's and all the success stories mingling with each other on this planet-rock. Some sort of hybrid productivity asking to be heard. Writing about liberty and livers, both accepted as ok and yet all take a beating in the face of silence and revolt. There's a science to all this, no? Some sort of belief in mandalas and star-signs, opening portals to Lemuria to take a weight right off your shoulders. I am Atlantis, and I am sinking.

A cigarette doesn't care, and neither do I. Addicted to a moribund desire to live. To really live! Not just add a few more moments to longevity by swallowing a carrot twice a day. Not just brushing my teeth twice between sunrise and sunset to avoid halitosis. Not just sitting and waiting for language to speak on my behalf.

Be-half, be-whole. Be-yonder, lose yourself. Be-yonder, and travel. Be-yonder, and forgive. Be-yonder, and don't forget. Store those memories and add them to your landscape, next time you drop acid, run amok through those stairwells and fields, re-introduce yourself to your life and remember the every's forever. Become highschool you again, where you'd sit on your mothers porch June mornings on your third cup of coffee, writing a poem with the drive of existential freedom unpresented with fears of rent or labour. You want fast-food? *** the change off your poor mum, and meet your old friends down at the local A&W.; These days really don't last forever, and thankfully you were smart enough to avoid working all those years. They will remain the best years of your life for.. perhaps.. your whole life.

Some mornings, you would wake up late on a Pro-D day, sipping a fourth cup of joe and watching the Antique Road Show on CBC because it's the only half-interesting thing playing on a late Tuesday afternoon. Your mothers couch was leather at the time, placed closest to the deck window with some sort of ferny-plant right next to it making peace with the forest. You would get lonely at times, and it wasn't until you graduated that you noticed how beautiful those 4 high-lined stick-trees standing in the desolate firth as the last remaining survivors of a clear-cutting operation really were, the way they softly bent in the wind, some sort of anchor whether rain or shine. Your mother would be at work, your brother would be out, or at dads, or upstairs, and for half-hours at a time you would stare at those trees, warped slightly through the lens of your houses very old glass. To you, it seemed, the world could be meaningless, and these trees would go as a happy reminder of how calm and archaic and beautiful this meaninglessness was. Watching them always quenched a blurry hunger in the soul. Something happy this way came. Something tricky and simple.

I could never really reach myself back in those days. Not anymore, anyways. That old me no longer had a phone, had tossed it in a creek in a fit of idealistic rage. That old me was living in a tent somewhere, squatting on private property and working at a bakery north of his old town. He still worked there, last I heard. Every summer evening, he went swimming in the ocean, wafting along on his back to think and pray. He was a Buddhist if I ever met one, reading the Diamond Sutra and the Upanishads, cracking the ice of belief with Alan Watts's 'Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown,' and preaching to his friends in cyclic arguments to prove the fundamental futility of theory. He's the kinda guy to shock you off your feet and make you wonder. Really wonder. Whoever he's become is on the road to wisdom. Whoever he thinks he is has never mattered. He's just waiting on the world to change.

Fancy.

Above me, the patterned cascade of skylight-window in the library courtyard hints at sunset coming. I contemplate the warmth and company of Tom's house a moment and wonder if he'd like me over. I think again of Petter and Alex way down there in Cali-forn-ya. A holy pilgrimage to Big Sur, and I still wonder where my passport is. If hunger and destitution weren't a block to intention, I'd be everywhere at once right now. I'd watch this very sunset from the top of Mount Baker, and yet be singing along to the Rolling Stones with Petter at my side. The Irish country would be rolling by again, and I would wonder where I am. The happy patch-work of County Cork would invite me to the Ring of Kerry where I would wait and sip a cappuccino, pouring over maps of Ireland in hopes of finding my hostel, as I'm sure I booked online.

The warm-red stonework of Whitstable village in Kent comes to mind. I think of Auntie Marcia and Uncle Bob, soaking up the sunlight with their solar panels and selling it back to the grid. I think of Powell River and its wilder-middle-ness, the parade of endless trees stretching east out unto Calgary. I think of every public washroom I have ever defecated in, and wonder how noisy or silent they might be right now. I think of Sooke, and its sticks. I think of Salt Spring Island and my first collapse into adulthood. I think of work, and how I haven't missed a dime I've spent.

I think of wine in an Irish bar, that night I was in the homely town of Bantry, with its rainbow homes and ancient churches, reading my 'Pocket History of Ireland' in disbelief at how far I'd made it on my own when that strange old fellow Eugene came up to me and struck up a conversation on world events. He tried to sell me vitamin supplements, toting it all as a saviour. I wrote him this poem a day later, a year ago, and think of him now:

49 years old, names Eugene.

We talk politics like a plane
doing laps over planet ours,
North Korea threatens bursts
of lightening and Irish businessman
defaults on debts to UlsterBank in
the mighty Americas. He tells
me to guess his age and to be
nice I take a medium sum of
35 (white lies). He tells me
why he looks so young at
49 and tries to sell me a healthy
soul as if he were an angel of loves-
yerself or a devil
of capitalism pecking at
exposed heels. Tells me
he used to be drawl, pizza-
faced, suicidal before
production loved a spiritual
lung. Tell me what! Tell me
WHAT!
When life gives you lemons,
hug the lemon tree. Seems
the angels have sold out and
they're nice enough.



He really was a nice guy.
excerpt- 'the mystic hat of esquimalt'
My thanks to the store clerk working the midnight shift
God bless the dishwashers at local restaurants laboring for minuscule pay
To the forklift operators moving freight for hours on end ,
to cleaning crews preparing offices for another day
For the plumber protecting health in the wee hours of
the morn
For sanitation workers hard at work well before dawn
Copyright April 24 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
matt nobrains Aug 2011
pestilence and
rapture,
two key elements
of
western civilization.
what is the difference
between a moth
and a
butterfly?
coffee stained teeth
catch soft whispers in the dark.
as we sit, surrounded by people,
frankness and penitence,
the priests, cops, postmen,
stockholders, school teachers,
slaughterhouse workers,
dishwashers,
garbage truck drivers,
prostitutes, strippers,
and hobos,
all working towards
what they believe to be the common good.
while we sit
in our chairs, wearing nothing,
clipping our toenails
each fractured fragment a whole.
we aren't alone anymore.
Sparrow Feb 2013
She gets lost between piano notes and
Champaign bubbles
I swear her eyes are always just a little
Too far away
But she sings that it won’t matter
In a million years
So I forgive her

She still gets lost between piano keys
But forgets to play them these days,
I catch her staring at the notes
And there is something oozing from between knotted heart strings
she whispers that the chords are too tight
so I just nod
There are clinking glasses
And the quiet hum of dishwashers
But I don’t think her smile
Even flickers anymore

Someone told me
She still gets lost sometimes
Forgets which road takes her home
Probably because her Home was between the notes
And there was nothing
Even there to begin with.
Someone told me
she uses beer cans instead of wine glasses
and I didn’t even know she had started drinking
wine on the weekends.

I don’t think her cheekbones
Can stop screaming

But she still washes the dishes
With the bubbles all overflowing
In the cold metal of the sink
I guess there wasn’t much left to
celebrate
after the going away parties ended

She is pretty lost
Sometimes I catch her and beg
But there is no point to her madness anymore
I think she got lost between
Straight ideals
And
Bent chords
Forgotten words
And everlasting thoughts
I catch her in the street sometimes
Singing --

I secretly love the way she says the word music
Because she never speaks
These days
She only sighs
In the warbling mutter of someone
So far away

She is
Just the muse of a hundred musicians
With Champaign bubble eyes and
Track marked heart leading nowhere but hell
I think she begged them to stop
Serenading her sadness
But there’s addiction on her lips

I never kissed her fears away
Sometimes I think I’m sorry
but all the bubbles popped
and it was time
to go
a m a n d a Dec 2019
hey.
listen.

i'm just a grunt
a cog in the machine
trying to get the same sized piece
of the american d r e a m
that you have.

but you don't see.
the absolute crack in the structure
of reality between
our generations,
and so you think it is e a z y
that we are lazy.

i almost laugh when i see you
scan the exact same insurance card from
20 years ago
you silly, silly babies.

you want to talk health insurance?
i am 39.
i was born in 1980, and at this very moment,
off the top of my head,
i can recall
having at the very least 9
different health insurance
providers since
i was 22 years old.

back then, i made $9/hour
and that was acceptable for the
state of my experience and education.
but much has changed in 17 years.
now, i make $16.50/hour and that,
my friends,
is not a decent salary
for a 39 year old that
is supposed to magically be saving for
a retirement that is getting less and less likely
by the day, because those
crazy things you old coots had
called "pensions" are a no-go in this climate...
while i am over here struggling with shelter,
food, clothing, healthcare, and education.

you have homes and cars
and dishwashers and pools
and vacations and
private schools and plenty of groceries
you don't think twice about going out
giving gifts
buying yourself treats, things
that are unnecessary
some of us only live in the world
of the necessary
and we have
d e b t.
live not even one paycheck
to the next.
there is no luxury
one moment from an emergency
with little comfort
and little hope

because of the things
you voted for. for the people you voted in the office.
the ideas you allowed to brew.
the envy and the greed.
and oh the righteousness.
the hypocrisy is just dynomite.
you done ****** up.
the planet, education, healthcare,
childcare, banks, greed, Wall Street, and corruption.
even for those of us who are
white and privileged and educated
there is no way out of the cycle
so imagine what you have done
to all the brown and black people.
the disabled. the veterans. the homeless. the sick.
the elderly. children. it's a ******* shitshow.

man after man after man after man and
war after war after war after war
and dollar after dollar after dollar after dollar

currently healthcare premiums alone
are 21% of my income after taxes
not including copays, deductibles,
coinsurance, medications, and things they
simply will not cover.

I went to school for 7 years,
have a master's degree, and
currently make $7.50 more/hour
than I did when I was 22 years old
(17 years ago)
with no experience whatsoever
and a bachelor's degree.

now i have a master's degree
over a decade of expertise and experience
and student loans that have gone from $80,000 to $120,000
and for that i get $7.50 more/hour
for a job
not in my field.
that doesn't even give you insurance for 3
months during which time
you just quite literally hope
no one calls an ambulance on you cuz
there is no way you are going bankrupt
for passing out from anxiety
over the state of your life, and besides, if you get sick
you are not allowed one iota of personal time
for the first 90 days

i will not even embarrass you
with the hilarious  student loan repayment options.
we won't even add the proposed $1800 payment to the
monthly analysis just to be jokesters.

rent is 25%
(for a ******, ugly, place)
not including heat
water, electric, internet,
cell phone


gas alone is 9%
i haven't even mentioned
food, car payments, and car insurance

can you see where the desperation might creep in?
you didn't go to college, or if you did,
tuition was truly affordable
on an average person's salary.
you expect things to be easy because they were easy
for you even though you think
it was hard.
it was not hard.
children and adults fully
financially stable on one average person's income?!
"middle class" is a joke.
it is not what it once was.
and to me, now
it seems quite
an impossible dream.
getting one job and keeping it practically
your entire life?!
stop it, my side hurts!
a bonus?!
please!
a union?!
comprehensive healthcare for your entire family
with no deductible and little to no copays?
girl, you sure is funny.
an affordable home?
****,
we haven't even talked about
credit card debt!
outrageous taxes, tolls,
and fees.
for-profit prisons
and for-profit healthcare.
why what a wonderful idea,
surely will do the most good
for the most people.
3 billionaires
own more wealth
than the entire bottom half of americans.
read that again, please.

your tactics have brought us corporate greed, corruption,
a failed war on drugs, a failure to teach equality
and comprehensive *** education in schools
untold wars, mutilation, torture, and death
the suppression of women.

my life is the proof of your oppression
and the heart of your discontent
but you could never live it and survive
you delicate little flowers
  the system is ******
and the very foundation is crumbling
As of December 1, which is the 335th day of the year, there have been 385 mass shootings in the U.S., according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks every mass shooting in the country. Twenty-nine of those shootings were mass murders.

your thought are gong backward
and it is painfully obvious to
the rest of us
that you are simply]
of no use to us,
the people looking
toward a better future.

you did not prepare us for
the world of your making
you prepared us for your world
and that is why there is a disconnect.

but ok, b o o m e r





ok, boomer
whatever you say
Danny C Dec 2013
In winter, sound travels faster. It cuts through the December air like an airplane through a morning cloud. But inside it's still the same: A restaurant of clattering silverware clanking against emptying plates of an overpriced breakfast and dialogues blending together like the roar of industrial dishwashers. I wonder how many conversations it takes to fill an otherwise empty room with white noise. Sometimes a spoiled child will punch through the murmuring with a wild, untamed hiss, or a clash of plates, glasses and silverware stacked like a wavering Jenga tower will crank necks and turn shoulders. And yet, in my booth for two, half filled -- as my coffee is -- there is silence more terrifying than a raging hurricane. As the waiter fills my coffee with a consolation sigh, I sit quietly thumbing through old contacts in a phone built for someone far more important than me. I see no names that should fill the empty seat, and wish so badly to add a new one.
Brent Kincaid Dec 2015
It was a scam, a sham
The flimmiest of flams
There was more pork there
Than a Christmas ham.
It’s nothing but a racket
Stuff it all into a big packet
And put into a time capture
Leave it until the rapture
Where it can’t hurt anybody
Then, fix yourself a hot toddy
And laugh about how shoddy
Future folks will think we are.

They won’t be wrong by far.
They’ll marvel at how many
Candidates worth a penny,
Or less, showed up to run
Like the whole thing was fun
And better than a TV show.
How could they tumble for
Not that good of a governor
Didn’t know what lips are for
Or what to say on the floor
Yet some wanted her to run?

What fun the press had with
Filling up the internet bandwidth
With screeching permutations
Of tired old KKK reiterations
Of the wonderful Aryan nation
The South advocated before
We had us a big-*** ugly war.
It’s like they didn’t know they lost
And were prepared to pay the cost
To do it all over again, not just men
But women too, who shouldn’t do
Because they were not part of
The government to be started up.

It was rather Alice In Wonderland,
The fuzzy details of their whole plan.
Certain things were carved in stone.
Some should go back to an age of stone
And forever leave the real people alone.
Because they’d shout out now and then
That this world was meant for white men
To run and control and own. Nothing tribal.
They said it was written in their Bible
Which was obvious they never really read
Or they would know what it really said
About helping the poor, the halt and lame.

They went on doing harm in the name
Of the King of Passion and Rescue
Saying that was the wrong thing to do.
They insisted they could do what pleases
And it should have nothing to do with Jesus.
It’s all about who is rich and who is not
And who doesn’t need what they have got:
All the good land and the mineral rights.
The rest can just stay up nights working
Two jobs, maybe three, they didn’t care.
Those pundits had to start somewhere.
Let those dishwashers and caddies
Go get their own filthy rich daddies
To leave them accounts full of millions
So they could hire undocumented millions
To build their dynasties of marble and gold.
Really, folks. This story never gets old.
Third Mate Third May 2015
as is our wont, she cooks, I clean.

a division of labor, that reflects
skills levels celebrating
les différences vivent!

sink-bent, over the grill pans,
with water thundering,
soap liquid armies/battles concocting
(secret, shh!)
nonetheless overhears her
chilling in bed,
veg TV watching
thunderous interrupted by
what he knows
will be minimum six or
seven sneezes

which is her wont.

one/two won't ever do,
she a veritable sneezing machine gun,
ever alert, the scrubbing man
becomes a danseur fluid,
performing a triple tours en l'aire
from kitchen to bed in three bounds

with swift and mighty leaps to new heights,
he makes his way to her side,
having plucked tissues,
from a nearby, overhanging branch
upon his way.

seven sneezes immobilize,
kinda like being tasered,
snowball-in-the-face stunners,
requires her man to be a her-o-dancer
to be a savior, gift bearing
of relief-aid to her side.

he returns to the kitchen work,
you cannot half wash dishes,
it's an all or none thing,
it's a man self back slap/clap of the hands
when satisfaction of job completed visible.

satisfaction of just rewards
should always be given
to heroes,
danseurs,
dishwashers,
one and all

so when he slips in beside her,
greeted with seven kisses
for seven sneezes

and this children
is no love poem,
but one of daily stories of
lives well lived in love,
where the mundane,
where the ordinary,
traded up into precious extraordinary
are ever on poems of life,
and ok,
yup,
love
too.


now slap/clap for jobs well done....
John F McCullagh Oct 2014
One hundred and fifty travelers each day
Arrive from West African climes.
While its clearly insane to let them board planes
They can travel on scheduled airlines.
If they’re asymptomatic, they enter our ports.
Is the government out of its mind?
With dishwashers and Laundries our first line of defense
Ebola will spread over time.
Airline and hotel stocks are selling off big
Pharmaceuticals ought to do fine.

A nurse who watched Duncan as he sickened and died
Flies to Cleveland and back to big D
Her temperature was merely ninety nine point five.
“.Oh, you’re fine.” said the C-D-C.
Please,

All the dishwashers I've refilled:

Pass them along to the lollipop guild.

Sincerely,

Me.
aurora kastanias Oct 2017
I was born in a city and time where and when
things were described by their name in the name
of realism and truth, uncoloured nouns of honesty
depicting society as it was fearing nothing
while no one took offence, as none was intended

in the atmosphere of autocriticism and self-
deprecating humour. In the countryside village
peasants called my father the Greek, as there were
no aliens other than us and the English man
who lived down the valley. Black skins

only existed on TV, and Africa was far more distant
than maps ever suggested. Our Ghanaian origins
were a mesmerising fable to the curious ears
of those willing to imagine exotic airs, indefinite
populations they had never seen. Italians

were used to migrate abroad in search of dreams,
though no one came to dream in Rome until, they did.
First strange faces appeared for myths to become
realities integrating slowly fast-forwarding thirty years
to see, Filipinos housekeepers, cheaper butlers,

Rumanians and Moldavians caregivers to our elders,
Chinese empires beginning with restaurants and shops,
Selling almost anything one could ever think of affordable
to all, now expanding to own bars creating jobs,
employers of impoverished locals and new arrivals.

Bangladeshis taking over once-was Italian grocery cash
and carries working hard, a 24/7 policy just for some.
Those who don’t are found selling umbrellas on the road
a minute before the storm, or taking polaroid pictures
of tourists at night when the gypsies come out

of nomad camps to sell, unscented roses to lovers
unnaturally blue for the day is reserved, to picking
pockets on public transports everybody knows,
signs are put up for those who don’t. Lebanese
hairdressers hiring young Italian girls, eat in Turkish

kebab fast-foods buying halal ingredients in Iraqi stores.
Only blacks in Rome own nothing but their shoes
and reputation. Those from North African countries often deal
on sidewalks for drug addicts playing instruments
sitting next to dogs on Tiber bridges as they beg

for one more dose. Though Egyptians mainly deal
with chefs, closed in restaurant kitchens learning
pizza-making skills, while Pakistanis make excellent
dishwashers. Turning back to blacks Nigerians,
Senegalese, Malians and many more improvise

themselves as clandestine street vendors
of jewels and fake bags, the latter secretly supplied
by Italian mafia-like wannabes. Often spotted running
away from police, packing goods in white sheets, held
on their backs as they flee, leaving fallen merchandise

behind them. Finally some remain unseen, straight
from heart of darkness and surroundings they stay
strictly on TV, passing from satiric sketches of the past
to NGO adverts crying out, for help against famine,
poverty and sickness, calling for action two euros a day

via sms to keep, consciousness clean, as we close
our eyes not to see, pretend we do not know, hiding
behind words we call, politically correct not to face, take
distance from reality and truth, disguise inconvenience
and uncomfort with ridiculously embellished, jargon.

Some exceptions obviously exist, as many manage
to live outside the box, though alas and do not blame me
for speaking the truth, they remain to date exceptions
dear to my heart, as are all the characters of this portrait,
scattered pieces of humanity, pieces of me.
On political correctness
Carly Salzberg Jan 2012
Yellow is ***** or is it? I know a lot of yellow people that think like dishwashers
spinning turning loose their causes for finding likeness compatible. I know people that like to machinify the living and talk about furniture as if it heard the rumors in the fabric already supposedly threading. I know people that lust after red draping rooms thinking it more desperate than the sun I’ve seen them click at it looking directly into the lighting of things making drama more dramatic than modern living. I’ve heard people make relationships out of these resemblances as if every eye had an ear to be heard without looking making silence appear chilling but every bit thrilling. Was it just yesterday a girl confessed she named her plants with each passing lover? There are people that attach themselves to objects so violently they fall in love with a chair a chair worth a thousand words more than it gives in its cedar vintage dress but that’s just one chair. I know people that vacation to inns retreat to estate sales to hoard stories in bracelets and oil lamps tracking floorboards with time uttering words no longer used like duvets and chesterfields and smirking into their dusty reflection from an embroidered hand mirror. I know people that would buy used postcards. Yellow. All I’m saying is I know people that avoid white at all cost.
I used to think you knew your soul mate if their chin fit perfectly into the nook in your neck. My first girlfriend was pretty awesome at giving hugs.

But I knew the kind of woman I wanted to marry the day I watched my mother hum her favourite song while doing the dishes.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to her humming.

Would my son ever watch me slow dance with his mother?

Or would I always be writing poems about leopard print skins and french fries hair.

I carry all these things on top of my heart and I fear if it gets broken they’ll all fall through the cracks.

Maybe I have a flawed perception of romance, maybe slow dancing, humming, dishwashers don’t exist. Maybe gorgeous earthquakes aren’t always heart breaking but ground breaking.

I feel like each second is a grain of sand and the waves are washing away my sand castles one after the other. People always tell me I make the truth the hardest to understand, so I guess what I’m trying to say is I feel like time is running out. And with all the so called fish in the sea, these waves never seem to leave any on my shores.

Maybe I’m too blinded, concentrating on fish when there’re great blue whales around, tiger sharks and even electric eels that we’ll always have a spark.

I’ve been living too fast, but there’s no point finishing first if there’s no one waiting at the finish line, I’d rather slow dance to her humming and maybe in essence we would be the ones that won.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to no music in the living room. I know she eagerly anticipates the day her and I slow dance to my wedding song. I hope this is not another failed attempt of me trying to get closer to that day.
Kimberly C Brown Sep 2010
He stands behind the bar.
His demeanor is calm,
not caring
about anything but
the meticulous arrangement of liquor bottles.
With a white ragged cloth in his right hand
he grips the glass necks
between
his three first fingers and thumb.
He people watches.
slowly he paces back and forth
behind his protective

separation

seeing the world behind his sleep laden eye lashes.
He sways to the music of
golf commentators and steam cleaning dishwashers.
Tired, broken, slightly drunk from sips of ***
he sneaks
when no one is looking,
he lets each palm lay flat
against the cold plastic granite counter top.
To his right two women
in their fifties
are lulling about grandchildren,
while the
click
clicking
of a laptop causes a stressful twitch in his left eye.
New customer.
"Hi, how you doing?"
She walks away, slightly bothered
he pays more loving attention to
hot glass out of the steam washer
than her need for a twelve dollar glass of
bitter clear looking liquor.
More people.
four this time.
"Hi there, how are ya?"
The woman asks in a loud voice.
Shes happy, excited waiting for
a husband back from a business trip.
She orders a glass of champagne
while the man shes with wants Budweiser.
"We only have light. Is that okay?"
The man looks ******,
as if he himself should take on
responsibility of a society growing more fond

of an inebriated state of mind.

As the woman continuous to talk
unending
he places the wine glass before her,
all the while thinking
with a bitter delight
that her husband,
who has frequent trips
sees a different girl every night.
He knows this,
all the staff at the airport
that have an occasional drink know this.
But his wife,
his obnoxiously cheerful wife,
sits in blissful ignorance.

They're still talking,
still trying to make conversation
while a baby mewls in the background,
and the golf spectators cheer at a whole in one.
He's tired.
let off momentarily by the bar manager
he sneaks another small glass of
***
mixes it with Dr. Pepper before walking into the back.
His breathing is methodical,
he waits for a sound,
anything
at all to signify his existence,
his meaning of living
before he takes another sip of his drink.
The *** goes down hard,
***** threatens
to
displace
his pride
but he manages to keep it down.
"YO!"
He winches
at the rust filled tone in his managers voice.
More people have pulled into the bar.
Its busy he needs help.
He lets out a curse
it bursts forth then
settles
hovering before is red eyes
before pushing away from the desk.
The metal legs scrap against the stone floor.
Another sound that makes his mind
believe that ***** is the only
escape
to some type of comfort.
His rubber soled shoes squish as he walks.
He sighs.
Sounds of golf cheering and baseball playing
distracts him
momentarily from his misery.

A jolt of pain doubles him over.

"Has my temple split?" he thinks.
He gingerly flutters his first three fingers
against the vein pounding incessantly.

A young woman walks up the the bar.

She belongs on a beach, he thinks.
Her hair hangs between her shoulder blades.
Her eyes are are light,
her skin glows
between her light turquoise mesh shirt
and bleach white shorts.
She orders a cold coffee,
he pushes the can over slowly
watching
her shell earrings clink against her jaw bone.
She gets up,
he watches,
and walks from the bar.
An arm wraps around her waist
outside the threshold of the bar
and kisses her softly on her forehead.
Her father perhaps.
She doesn't look back.

He did not stick at all in her mind.

He instantly erases her face
and resumes to dancing his fingertips
against his excited vein.
The clocks reads 8:25.
Two more hours.
The carpenters house is never finished.

The dishwashers roomate leaves passive aggressive sticky notes on the faucet.

After work, the cook does not make dinner; the cook finds dinner.

The retail worker will not hesitate to call you an *******.

The bartender
can not hold a relationship.

The caregiver
can not bear a child

When the lobbyist comes home, there is no talk of money; there is no talk at all, only passion, hands and coffee.

When the lobbyist does not come home, there is plenty talk of money; prepaid hotel suites, passion, hands and no coffee.

In the *** workers free time, the *** worker does not give body to strangers; you will never find a lover more faithful than the *** worker.

When the prophett dies, the prophett keeps living.

When the artist is not painting
the artist is watching.

The worlds most powerful leaders have a dungeon in their basement.

The sociopath can know what is right and do the wrong thing anyway.
The sociopath doesn't need a job for that.

It just happens...

sometimes...

The sociopath is working on it.
Freedom to sun tan on the Rio Grande & its tributaries. The right to worldly tacos. To eat grilled foods @ a leisurely pace. To celebrate with guns when in fashion.
  We were @ the foot of Hand Ave. (in Ormond Beach, Fla.) supervising shoulder work on the 3rd leg of our journey and demanding purity of pure daughters who remain unsullied by the hands of dishwashers.
If you're not dysfunctional
you're not a family,
trust me
I know.

Dishwashers wash away the sins of gluttony.

Watched them come
seen them go
and all of them thought
they were in the know

I set my machine to terminate
the fukin plates can wait
chefs in second
but
management in first
and I wait
for the cycle to end.

— The End —