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Raymond Johnson Apr 2013
The brain is a pretty rad little doodad. Sitting atop your neck, buzzing with blood and budding thoughts like an apple tree in spring.
I think it's fascinating that we're still quire clueless as to how it really works.
There's one particular part that still fascinates me, namely, memory.

Memories are the cranial equivalent of keeping a diary or writing in a journal. a collection of feelings and happenings of days gone by and words once said.
There are a few journal entries, if you will, that stand out to me. Ones I made with a girl... let's call her B.

If B were here right now, I'd look her in her big brown eyes and ask her:

Do you remember?

Do you remember the divine way the curves of your body fit into mine was we lay in an amorous embrace amongst the blankets and downy pillows?

Do you remember the way I told you a million times that I loved your hair. Your angelic, graceful hair, even though you thought it was too long and too messy?

How we walked through the forest for hours, talking about nothing and nonsense, and how we sat on a log for what seemed like eternity until I manufactured enough courage to finally kiss you?

They say that elephants never forget, and every time you cross my mind I feel my nose getting a little longer and my skin turning a little greyer.

Do you remember? Because I sure as hell do.

Do you remember how adorable you looked in those pajama pants of mine that were about a foot too long for you because you forgot to bring your own?

Do you remember how we sat on a bench and watched the birds flit from feeder to feeder as the sun waved us a crimson farewell?

Do you remember the feeling of your lips upon my lips, and the simple fact that it is impossible to properly describe that in any banal combination of 26 tired characters?

Do you remember the bittersweet intermingling of the smells of my eighty dollar cologne and your forty dollar shampoo?

Do you remember the way we looked into each other’s eyes? The vast universes of possibilities leaping from neuron to neuron behind those irises?

Wonderful memories. Pleasant memories. You couldn’t ask for anything better than these kind of memories. But there’s more. And there’s a reason why they’re just memories.

I remember the way the blood drained from my face like your used bath water circled the drain in my bathtub, and how my heart went on strike and stopped beating when you told me we couldn’t be together.

I remember how similar the crunch of the leaves and twigs under our booted feet sounded to the cracking and shattering of my sanity as you drove away on that sombre day.

I remember all of the dreams my brain pumped out of its pitiful pineal gland in a futile attempt to travel back in time.

I remember the empty spot in my bed and the gaping and gushing hole in my heart that still exists
To
This
Day.

But for all of these melancholy memories, these rotten ruminations, the beast of anger has yet to rear its matted mane.

In fact,

I thank you.

I thank you for this sadness, this regret, this longing, and this acute absence of rage,

For it is proof that I am alive.

I thank you for this sorrow, for this awful ammunition, for inspiration to machine masterpieces from the melancholy.

For what is light without darkness?

What is life without death, and love without loss?

So thank you.

I look back on our shared seconds not with eyes full of misplaced malice and fury,

But with gratitude.

Because even through tragedy

The heart survives.
https://soundcloud.com/blaxstronaut/memories
Tommy Johnson Jul 2014
One day Frick when to the place to buy some stuff
While Frack stayed in the area to do some things
Frack tossed out some junk
He used the the whatchamacallit to clean the thingamajig
Pick up the odds and ends
And he scrubbed a doodad with the thingamabob


Frick purchesed some knickknacks and bric-a-brac
A few sundries
A couple of tchotkes and trinkets
Some whatnot
A gizmo
A gadget
And more miscellaneous paraphernalia

When Frick got home Frack asked "What'd you buy?"
Frick said " Oh, this and that" "What'd you do all day?"
Frack said "Just a hodgepodge of etcetera, etcetera"
       -Tommy Johnson
bluevelvet May 2017
You said this is
how it has to be,
this was the end of
you and me.
I couldn't help but laugh,
throwing my head back.
You were never there,
so how could this be
the end of something
which was never fair?

You can say
that the pain won't last.
You can say
pretty words so fast.
You can never say
that you're a ******* human.

Beat-box and singing the blues,
he haunts these streets
with tethered clues.
What'll happen when
no one is willing to play,
finding better values?

You can say
that the pain won't last.
You can say
pretty words so fast.
You can never say
that you're a ******* human.

Not the most appealing,
not the brightest.
But I give life
to the extreme line
of finest.
I didn't waste my time.
Between the obscured lines,
you would have actually seen
everything else was exactly
as it seemed.

Reading every word,
you can easily find
I don't have masks to hide behind.
A s k m e a n y t h i n g,
I'm an open book.
All these words I say,
they're how I actually feel.
All these words I say,
it's how people have to deal
after going through you.
At least I can say
I'm human and that I make mistakes.

But tell me,
who are you really?
The one behind
the masked beast of fake.
Arthur Bird Feb 2016
#4
Furthermore, began St Anne by the Sea,
And a spotty Doctor Newcastle got down on one knee.
I hear the old folk *******.
I hear ducks up the chimney.
I'm eating hymn books and confetti;
Sweating mud now.

The very nearly possible was there;
Lovely laughing Uncle April was there;
The plump thigh from your thrilling island was there also;
The Balsam Boy,
The basil canary,
The mustard customer from Rhyl

We dated a wasting blue on the old shopping hill.
You had been with the Superintendent of cream
In the back rooms of Matthew August Ltd.
In private I was brown because of my tinnitus.
My child was only half written
According to those forty enormous Liverpools,
According to those three vaginal cannonballs.

Horace Horace and his delicious old porridge was the inability setting.
Thought clumsiness was in fashion back then.
Upstairs could hear the downstairs *******.

Now mock Tudor glands have all the critical opportunity
And hands pull on my circular feet.
Glum songbirds mingle in the dissapointment larder
Of the Transport Office between Mr Kane and his ***** milk.
The tutted Beryl train accounts for neither the sad 13,
Nor the burgundy drums of Cologne.

The dark doodad brigade broke the Parisian child pipes,
So now the garnet ***** are a very dusty parcel indeed.
And Sir Billick’s magnificent bottom of forty years has beckoned.

What delicious and capable spondees!
What fruits we acquired for Captain Mary!
We remember nothing therefore.

Now we must wash our spectacles
And take sympathetic musical suggestion for our tugged Nightingale methods.
(Thy lovely lasses unwittingly
unstintingly unexpectedly
taught me selflessness)

Every Holiday time each year,
a rocketing increase asper
doling out Uriah Heap ping
largesse imposed upon each
citizen banker (coerced, forced,
induced to buy baubles,
bibelot, curios, et cetera striving
to outspend a competing
shopper, which faux grand
handedness, and crass exhibition

generating mega sales (as Tale
of Two Cities, or more)
earns management stripes viz
embracing the Christmas spirit
(via blithely deftly, frenziedly,
et cetera) per avidly boasting,
coarsely displaying, eagerly
flaunting, et cetera prices paid

for the latest curiosity, doodad,
gewgaws (whereby un
avoidable advertisements), flood
mass communication airways,
causeways, driveways, et cetera
to plug reduced priceline sans
gaud dee, knickknacks, gimcracks,
encompass companies blitzkrieg
for those, who disparage being
labeled Scrooge plunk down
every red cent, and empty
their pockets, purses, wallets

to snag the title of topnotch spender
no matter no need exists to ******
every last kickshaw, novelty ornamental
tchotchkes, (which modus operandi,
(visited upon the populace, a tidal wave
vis a vis figurative manifestation,
laceration, inundation, whereby tenet,
maxim, credo, et cetera broadcast
to general public amply expending
page number two:

fistfuls of dollars fulfilling
Great Expectations
(for family, friends, relatives)
buy giving liberally,

via unspoken mandate, and
thence subsequently, when receiving
presents galore, tis incumbent to craft
sincere polite thank you note
(written in calligraphy if possibly)
to evince real or feigned gratitude
despite The Battle of Life travails
and, whenever possibly necessarily
over spending monetary reserves
setting stage for Bleak House
after festivities subside,

whence welcoming return to employ
ment to garner green legal tender
to stave off Hard Times glad to
cease hearing annoying renditions
qua A Christmas Carol, and visiting
countless theaters enduring
legions of young actors and or
actresses portray the saga of Oliver Twist
a disadvantaged indigent boy
(given up by his mum),

and grudgingly accepted in an
Almshouse, where his early existence
mirrored unfair cruelty, whereat
Master of the deprived ladelled
thin gruel only one ration, a worse
perdition than death, this measly diet
lacked minimal nutrition, The Battle of Life.

This American Notes a disproportionate
concentration to reach out to those less fortunate
particularly Thanksgiving and Xmas
which effort laudable, yet a diminution
for succor such as: triumph over adversity
sustenance, accommodations seems
to muffle The Chimes remaining
three hundred and some odd or even days.
Carlo C Gomez Apr 2020
Two cups of happy
One cup of sad
A fair share of passion & caffeine
A whole lot of doodad
(You know what I mean?)
Even throw in a bit of the absurd
Now mix them all together
Shaken and stirred
as one fairly long run on sentence
unwittingly made locally famous
courtesy residents here at
Highland Manor Apartments
as first one foot and then the other
painstakingly, and agonizingly dragged
across the cement walkway
making absolutely sure
the entire foot touches the ground,
(analogous to geriatric

version of the hokey pokey)
made like toe tilly particularly
more trip lee dangerous for valley girls,
and posing an obvious challenge,
when unspecified oblivious tenant
yakking away to themselves
unknowingly shakily shambles,
(which elderly folk blindly
risking life and limb),
while tethered to an oxygen tank

gingerly, precariously, and zanily
maneuvers a walker or wheelchair
while chatting vis a vis bluetooth;
(a short-range
wireless technology standard
used for exchanging data
between fixed and mobile devices
over short distances and building
personal area networks:
In the most widely used mode,

transmission power
limited to 2.5 milliwatts,
giving it a very short range
of up to 10 metres)
communication maintained thru
miniature electronic paraphernalia
videlicet, now returning
to aforementioned abandoned,
harried, and suspended lodger
left poised to strike hard surface,

when going about their routine task
additionally rendered cumbersome
as occupant carefully finagles
old gnarled bent fingers
to manipulate requisite fob,
(a handy dandy little device
that works on Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) triggered courtesy
waving or tapping motion
of little plastic doodad)

near a corresponding reader,
and voilá – the door unlocks, -
which technology interestingly enough
linkedin to bit of curious history,
when remote keyless entry patented
in 1981 by Paul Lipschultz,
who worked for Neimans,
(a supplier of security components
to the car industry) and developed
a number of

automotive security devices:
His electrically actuated lock system
could be controlled
by using a handheld fob
to stream infrared data
automatically, electronically,
inevitably, and officially
granting permission for our inhabitant,
or unsuspecting intruder
(since very little – read none

security installed here)
to enter the front door,
presenting an unwelcoming
opportunistic, idealistic,
and antagonistic accident
about to happen if the track opening
and closing entryway portal
(bumped up against thin carpeting)
slightly bunched up
presents a raised lipped surface edge

(barely perceptible to those
who present a sight for sore eyes),
which uneven impediment
the literal downfall
for many a resident
at Highland Manor Apartment,
who tripped and fell ofttimes
sustaining significant injuries
to their fragile lovely bones.

— The End —