"droning" poems
maybe the buildings are hollow,
occupied only in facade on the first floor of storefronts
maybe this whole town is a hologram
of neon against puddles
on the pavement.
maybe the citizens are ghosts
floating by
in circles, or squares of city blocks,
around a routine,
or droning through on electric scooters
as if on muted theme park rides
to the next sensory diversion;
to the nearest gastronomical pleasure;
toward the weekend and its next party
celebrating the loss of time,
I see their tired faces
staring out from the glass
of coffeeshop windows
on every block.
I see their piles of beer cans
beside the trash chute.
I hear them singing
on booze-cruises to nowhere
What part of this cycle
that turns days into dust
moves us closer to heaven?
What feast from what new restaurant downtown
will feed our souls?
From which lonely night do we finally emerge
beside the one
whose presence fills
these hollow buildings
to the top-most floors?
Which of the empty lots
between us do we fill
with a conversation
about how this is all a dream,
or how we'll keep each other awake
on a bench
beneath a street lamp before dawn
waiting for the first bus to take us home.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 12:25 AM UTC
We've become a
civilization of diseases
we build
monuments
statues
institutions
thinking death won't ever find
us here.
Our minds are scrambled
our bodies are damaged
our food is poisoned
our skies are toxic
our vices
are forces of processes
beyond our
control.
When we are not humbled
by nature's power
we inflict our wounds
upon ourselves in
the names of greed
and self protection
and no one knows
what it really means.
Fearful of the silence
we fill our skies with
endless noise
babbling on in endless
monotones, droning
while traffic stalls
at a hot stand still
idling engines
idling souls
depletion of every last glimpse
of the past.
Jam packed
in the stench
I am lost today
in
this vitriol
as anxiety, death and desperation
from every corner
screams my name.
That's why I came
to these woods
where the illusion of
peace remains
as
wild fires burn
just down the lane
as you know
as you say
its always been this way
when bodies hung
at every cross-roads
hunger, power, ignorance
and strength
all ran
the show.
I'm sick with
every disease I
know.
I float upon these tranquil
blue waters
and
we are reminded of the peace we all
really can know.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 9:26 AM UTC
Feel empty in your post apocalyptic City of Angels,
Where not even your pets are real!
An electric android, a sheep or a frog,
The whir-flutter of micro-electrical wings of a butterfly.
Good, and so you ought.
Now grab the handles of your empathy box,
And in a shared virtual hallucination –
Feel: empathy, depression, pain, delusion and despair,
The outré myriad gifts of consciousness.
Billions of discombobulated and disconnected wrecks:
Adam's sons; Eve's daughters,
And among them simulations too,
Fakes! androids!
A phony circuit of implanted semi-conscious memories,
A hive of neural malaise!
Welcome to our world;
know how dead inside I am.
You, yes, you:
Need a pet to make you more complete?
Maybe you can afford
A Fake Fakir Flake like me who looks like Jude Law,
Sounds like Richard Burton,
And silently romances you like Rudolph Valentino.
Come and stick what’s left of your mind,
In here,
In hair,
Hear her:
har, har, har…
A box of lies...
A voice, Mercer's,
With texture from an age you neither lived in nor dared in:
Al Jerry's, a TV actor,
Droning on in pre-selected tones.
The real thing, the men, the women, the children - their animals -
Made in the wild, wild desert,
In the green pulsing savannah,
On the open crusted sea;
Now too, washed, choked, and drained,
Too many spliced and diced mutations,
Iterating your image:
The thing that was my heart,
My Child, now its imitation.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC
A comely rainbow
spanning the wet, sobbing sky;
colours showering
mesmeric pearls of teardrops on earth.
Many subtle shades of marvel
unfolded that day.
Elegance of burning splendour in sun’s soul -
earth treasuring the seed of the first rain
in its womb for a new birth -
Spring’s svelte fingers
painting brilliance across the droning vale -
mist of radiance of a gorgeous moon -
stars sparkling to a melody
flowing from the divine harp -
sea breeze carving
shifting sculptures on sands of gold -
amorous mirth of sea waves
rushing to the hug of a waiting shore.
I stood there,
a trance benumbing my senses
to an hypnotic bliss.
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018 at 12:45 PM UTC
I had as lief be embraced by the portier of the hotel
As to get no more from the moonlight
Than your moist hand.
Be the voice of the night and Florida in my ear.
Use dasky words and dusky images.
Darken your speech.
Speak, even, as if I did not hear you speaking,
But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts,
Conceiving words,
As the night conceives the sea-sound in silence,
And out of the droning sibilants makes
A serenade.
Say, puerile, that the buzzards crouch on the ridge-pole
and sleep with one eye watching the stars fall
Beyond Key West.
Say that the palms are clear in the total blue.
Are clear and are obscure; that it is night;
That the moon shines.
7.8k
There's an earthy blood-smell to lavender
It surprises you when the nose gets too close
Once you get past the modest skirted blooms
To find the green blood of torn out flower
Fetid black dirt clings to blood ragged roots
Blue-black blood of returning vena cava
Lavender scented babies and lavender tinted men
Planted for eternity underneath fertile soil
And blood-rise suns bake their tender heads
Blood drenched scent tempts the droning insects wing
Their distilled spirits resurrected in hives
Their earthly blood now ours to imbibe.
Oct 14, 2011
Oct 14, 2011 at 1:18 AM UTC
it's all a buzz inside me
cotton fluffed between my ears
and ceaseless crickets droning,
like a tuning fork that never ends
but always holds the pitch
of time and undivided space.
an empty shell peering out at life
stuffed with eternal noises
of neurons crackling.
where's the fun in cotton candy
when it's stuffed inside my head?
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 5:12 PM UTC
Orange capsules of condensed vitamin C
Tumble out onto my cracked,
Outstretched palm,
As I arch my spine towards the bathroom sink,
Scooping lukewarm water from the faucet
Into my half closed mouth-
The tiny pills clog my upturned throat:
Just two of the numerous solutions
To a world too numb
To contest.
I've never felt more alive,
Than when I'm drowning my body
With handfuls of tap water
And magic remedies bottled up and
Marketed to a world
Afraid of growing old.
Lining the wall of local drug stores,
One isle over from office supplies
And scented laundry detergent.
Multicolored, multipurpose-
Labels proclaim the fountain of youth
To anyone alive enough to fear it.
There's never enough of reality
To reach our depleted veins
Through the ever present forms
Of the world. Enough isn't
Enough, until we've convoluted it into a tiny
Plastic oval, and forced it down the throats
Of those well enough to swallow it.
Pharmaceutical companies proclaim their
Daily gospel in the linoleum streets
Of hospital waiting rooms
And local grocery stores,
As I cross my heart and count the
Hours until my next prescribed dose
Of complacency. Who knew happiness
Could have the bitter after taste of
Vitamin B or
The credibility of Zoloft.
The sandman has been replaced by Benadryl,
While creativity lies stagnant
Beneath adderall's indifferent thumb.
Obsession is a 26 letter alphabet,
Strung together by a bunch of deficiencies,
Incoherently droning on
To the burden of Man,
And flickering neon light
Of a drive-thru pharmacy.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 1:41 AM UTC
The cricket's rhythmic chivalry
slows to Autumn's droning crawl
like an unwound eight-day clock
unconsciously neglected by time
The Sounds of summer that fall silent
are never really noticed until gone
things we often take for granite,
a mistake rendering life benign
Dreams living only in our minds
beheld within, the love that keeps us alive
never caring, never needing to know,
"fifty ways to leave your lover" behind
So many miles spinning faster,
so much weight to weigh you down
it never really was a simpler time
just a window with a different view
Fleeting time may shine like shooting star
an irreverent kind of blinding light come to pass
a different hue of colours cast and sown
an eerie silence may befall unprovoked
As if you found an urgent message
in a bottle drifting through your tides
you can spend the rest a lifetime trying
to catch lightening in that bottle thence
Don't look away from a moment
too long ... in the blink of an eye
it'll all be gone
someone you used to know ... September 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 1:56 PM UTC
"Good morning, beautiful."
Words like a soft autumn breeze,
caressing, chilling to the touch;
three simple words to form one
complex ecosystem,
teeming with life,
droning with emotion.
I catch a glimpse of a bird,
a distant memory,
a sample of a sound I've heard before,
calming and pleasant.
May 7, 2010
May 7, 2010 at 2:05 AM UTC
Bursting taps
Like broken feet
Crack,
Droning a beat.
Exclamations and hearts.
Facebook Frankenstein:
Nerves made senseless,
By hyperbolic sentiments.
Stripped as wires,
Latex skin and a rib removed,
Bringing the heart close to the keys.
Orchestrated wires and pulleys
Raising muscles like curtains.
Brushing ***** bleached hair,
Catching fingers like paper cuts.
A hollow form,
Designed in California,
Approved in New Jersey,
And made in some sweat shop.
Flash your smile,
Take your soma,
Dream of MTV;
You're the nightmare of my society.
Jul 21, 2011
Jul 21, 2011 at 5:54 PM UTC
she had an uncle who spent
twenty years in the ring,
landing solid blows until
he landed
in a downtown Oakland hotel,
older than he, wrecking ball got it
in the dawn of the cyber age
but for ten droning years,
it was his cage
he never had a title shot
but he kept his belly full
and had cash for the women, the drink
never drove a car, cabbies knew him
and knew the smell of gin meant
“keep the change”
when his legs got weak
and his left eye went to blur
the money stopped rolling in
but he still thirsted for the gym, the gin
he got himself a gig at Big G’s
just enough hours to clean out the showers,
to keep the johns from smelling of ****
and a few greenbacks comin’ his way
he would end each day
alone in his room, inhaling the gloom
that seeped over the transom
like smoke from a smoldering fire
but there was no fire left in the ancient hotel
or Parrot’s burned up belly
only fading memories
of a wounded warrior
who taunted his opponents
by mimicking every word they said
in the ring, where he earned a bird’s name
but never its sweet song, before time
took its tattered toll
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 8:29 PM UTC
There's no replying
To the Wind's sighing,
Telling, foretelling,
Dying, undying,
Dwindling and swelling,
Complaining, droning,
Whistling and moaning,
Ever beginning,
Ending, repeating,
Hinting and dinning,
Lagging and fleeting--
We've no replying
Living or dying
To the Wind's sighing.
What are you telling,
Variable Wind-tone?
What would be teaching,
O sinking, swelling,
Desolate Wind-moan?
Ever for ever
Teaching and preaching,
Never, ah never
Making us wiser--
The earliest riser
Catches no meaning,
The last who hearkens
Garners no gleaning
Of wisdom's treasure,
While the world darkens:--
Living or dying,
In pain, in pleasure,
We've no replying
To wordless flying
Wind's sighing.
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you wedge your pointer finger between your canines-
in an attempt to appear sublime- or nervous- or seductive
either way it doesn't succeed.
your tooth, teeth
speck of blood, bleed
emerging as you pierce your calloused
yellow patch of skin
(layers & layers of the girls you've touched before)
but you crave one more-
for in every sleepless night
there's a quote to be fill- a new slit to drill-
you're a man.
i can sense it-
throbbing and shaking beneath your olive exterior
how you long to drag
your now bloodied, prior prettied
finger up an off white thigh-
to disregard the things obliged-
to forge the paradigm
from faulty tools,
splintered and battered in a worn down knapsack
duct taped to a hunching back,
you're a man.
thoughts of droning monotone
quiet your hungry bones
(i can hear them)
rattling as you ****
your head and lift that heavy glance up to me.
i can see you,
flopping and thrusting and sweating, which
after years of curiosity has handed me
nothing,
but sweaty sheets and burning ***
i lay beneath you, silent
i'm a woman.
avert your eyes ( i am tempted to plead)
from the onset of premature varicose veins
(i am pale, glasslike, arched & stained)
allow me to suffocate the already immune-
girls born into the world with big black brandings
stamped onto their lightly acne ridden foreheads.
(SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE)
trim your ribs, shave off the cellulite-
turning a blind eye to accessible insight..
a salad for lunch, make it dinner too.
finger down your throat, orange acid hurling,
stick like dancers twirling,
they bring tears to your eyes,
if only {you} possessed the grace-
but there are pounds to erase.
i'm a woman.
thirteen years of advertisements stapled to your eyes
standing barefoot in a bath tub with chunks of blood
running down shaking legs
kicking off a now crimson pair of old underwear-
stuck & tangled on trembling feet
[ silence your voice and push up your *******
til they're touching your neck.
get a nose job
get a blow job
you're a woman ]
May 10, 2012
May 10, 2012 at 10:50 AM UTC
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a ***** play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that ***** sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
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It was a dissonant melody that made the lonesome mole weep from his blind eyes
and there were mascara stains on the face of a pensive ********** lady in the streetlights
When the orchestral waves wound up at the shores of a sandblasted city
the denizens were too afraid to speak out against tyranny, and they died
Wistful wonderment in the souls of the children as they walk hand in hand
and experience the crumbling of wonton rocks in the skies of their homeland
A celestial boom, droning on the streets, and the women are beat
Are you outraged yet?
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 7:55 AM UTC
The frustration
Do these feelings only flow through ink?
Oh what a bursting soul
that devours its own love
inside such a collapsing frame
That desire for touch, the affection that transcends
the droning life of our spinning globe
So insatiable; so confused
Those lips were always a different being than the others
Your path to interject into my timidly drifting course
It burned the maps ever drawn up
The only route from here on was ultimately to the conjured fantasy
of a glorious victory for your love
How idiotic; why is it you?
I, such a wandering pawn in our time's game
to see a magical land in your eyes
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 4:49 PM UTC
An irrefutable dream,
fulfilled tenfold in the illusion
made imperfect by dreamers' oblivion,
sought by the delver of selves.
Rejection of messengers,
the hive of deluded apathy
that saturates the air thick with the droning of silent hesitation
hexagonal compartmentalization,
sundering your cedar carapace,
which cancerous excess shatters,
and only cracks remain;
the afterthoughts of paradise
and undiscovered paths of depression,
an anxious exodus of life-force.
Part thine red sea,
lest plate tectonics make waves,
that cause molecules of hemoglobin to disperse in light,
the crimson tears of a soul,
sweeter than the lips coveted.
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 2:10 AM UTC
All around me, every day, I see them, lurking
Characters teasing me, praising me, staring at me, smirking
They're there every day, waiting, preying upon me, I'm their target
These characters of mine, I loathe them, they speak to me using an argot
Characters, they won't leave me alone, droning on and on in my head
I can't get rid of them, they'll never leave, each one I hope to shed
These characters most people call "voices," but that doesn't explain much
They hold onto me, suffocating me, they're a huge mental crutch
They're just holding me back, but I can't push them away, I hate it
Characters, I avoid and ignore them, but I share their pain, I'm a hypocrite
I despise them all, each and every one, I need them gone
These characters, these "voices," they're a "phenomenon."
Characters, such a repetitive topic, repetition is so boring
I hope I can keep this up a little longer, my abilities restoring
These characters limit the things I can do, I have a mental lock
I don't know how to express it, I might go into shock
I hope one day they'll leave me for good, they're such a pain
Characters I see, in the darkest puddles, and in each and every drop of rain
I can't ever get rid of them, they're here with me for life
These characters of mine will be with me, even in my afterlife
Dec 14, 2018
Dec 14, 2018 at 1:14 PM UTC
The sight of rain,
of wet clothes, wet plants,
wet doorsteps, wet hopes and dreams,
and, that known scent of sadness and grief
all these...create soggy, sluggish minds
we just lost two dogs to the virus
the glum of monsoon rains affects the moods
the "yays" from cancelled classes
have all passed...
sun is shining, not too bright, though,
peeps like a tease, but,
enough to dry the ground...
i see vacant lots...almost naked now
motor's droning hum is a lullaby
that lulls the mind
a strong smell stirs the nostrils and
defines a welcome pleasance...
i sniff....and chase away sadness,
with this intriguing scent
.....of freshly cut grass....
Sally
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
July 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 6:19 AM UTC
I
Am
So
Bored
Civic
Studies
Oh
My
Lord
Droning
Teachers
Boring
Class
Chances
Are
I
Will
Not
Pass
Half
The
Student
Fell
Asleep
Zero
Knowledge
They
Will
Keep
Civic
Studies
What
A
Bore
Good
Thing
I
Like
English
More
May 15, 2013
May 15, 2013 at 12:33 PM UTC
My eyes are slits
As my reflection is not familiar
— with her
But she has my attention
She is smoking from her ears
Her voice trembles
Her lips are thin lines in dry chaps
And her tone is well—
Seriously monotone
Like nails on a chalky stone
It sent violent shivers of discomfort
Up my spine
down again
This body
A zombie
I snapped back to my face of wasted time
She is an escapee from her own death
Her tone crosses me
Like a knife on my bone
In solemn droning
To the girl with bloodshot eyes
Though not from tears
But from bursting inside.
Feb 3, 2019
Feb 3, 2019 at 12:33 AM UTC
Midnight approaches
Tick tick tock
Won't someone stop
The Doomsday Clock
From striking oil
Drilling rock
Thirsting soil
Aftershock
Deserted hourglass of sand
Shifts to resource hungry hand
Tyrants of time assume command
Greed consumes
This wasted land
First come the roaches
Tick tick tock
The bugs can't stop
The Doomsday Clock
With beehive brains
No voice to talk
And droning minds
Comprise the flock
As lone wolves feast
On sheep they stalk
Then fear encroaches
Tick tick tock
Too scared to stop
The Doomsday Clock
As violence claims
Each city block
Blood drawn on streets
Like sidewalk chalk
When Hatred's loaded
Gun is cocked
Beyond reproaches
Tick tick tock
How could they stop
The Doomsday Clock
When despots trade
In human stock
Waging war
Upon this rock
As profits slaughter
More livestock
The end approaches
Tick tick tock
No hope to stop
The Doomsday Clock
As poisoned skies
Corrode this rock
With toxic lies
Controlling hourglass of sand
Clenched by Atlas choking hand
Titans of industry command
Still Chronos rules
This dying land
Sep 4, 2016
Sep 4, 2016 at 2:09 PM UTC