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if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah
These are all just bad beginnings
in my search for a show-stopper,
a jaw-dropper,
trying to be just the right balance
of sarcastic and lovely,
the right balance of writer
that I idealize and am not,
of course,
what am I, a narcissist?

I'm trying to put into words
the feelings I told you I danced
because they are wordless (spaceful)
and because of you
I have to say them with voice;
what a dilemma is this--

That when I tell you with movement
what I can't say
you put me in the place
of having to voice it and now
I have no words
other than bad beginnings.

So is that it?
When I word to you
instead of dance for you (for me?)
what you have to return is a nothing,
a less-than-nothing saying,
saying nothing, leaving me

hurt and confused because
maybe there was a something
in all your nothing that I can't find--
because we are dealing in words now,
and I'm a movement reader.

And I know I will forgive you for this
but I won't forgive me for knowing that.

Even while I'm still so angry, it just reveals
my pathetic (patient?) desperation for your love,

But I didn't say this right.
I need to move (dance) this.
Wonderful word wanderings
Robert Ueda Aug 2013
She was a hellaciously hard hittin’ heart stopper

A semi-sophisticated mother/daughter

My complex candy coated no-LSD dropper
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2022
i've started to absolutely loath these shifts at Oxford...
for one: compared we're talking about a league one side...
the ****** stadium is one thing
but... just the drive there: and back...
out of the house from 1pm until 12:30am...
and for what? there's that coughing up for fuel
which has increased from £10 to £15... hell: my pay
hasn't risen...
   on topic: i was talking with my father about this...
inflation... the prices of commodities increases,
but the wages do not...
    fair enough: i might seem gullible at times...
given my grandfather was a member of the communist
party... but then communism in Poland
(a satellite state) wasn't the same as it was
in the actual Soviet Union... i'm no romantic of communism...
but surely if there's a concept of inflation:
there ought to be a logic around a concept of deflation...
but there isn't one in economics,
i.e. when wages go up: but the price of commodities
stays the same...
yet... the work of dairy farmers is the same: quality
and quantity-wise... economics it not my strong point...
i'm just thinking out-loud...
and i like thinking-dumb...
              my recent fascination comes in the form
of Confucius < Mozi < Mencius < Zhuangzi | Huizi
i.e. Kong Qui < Mo Di < Meng Ke < Zhu7ang Zhou |Hui ****...

i leave the house for roughly 10 hours and bring
back about £35... sure... it's the easiest shift on my list...
i get paid £35 to watch a football match...
but? today... the sky above Oxford looked more
entertaining than the football match... so? for the majority
of the time while the sun was still clinging
to reign over the sky: i was just looking at very pretty
clouds in the distance... i sometimes can't stomach
these base human foundations for society:
entertainment... i'd rather drink a bottle of wine
and just watch clouds behave like sloths...
or... perhaps not sloths... more like when a jellyfish
****** a cauliflower....

at least there was banter with my "manager"
en route toward Oxford... i ate a McDonald's in the alley
while waiting for him to pick me up...
banter... oh right: code words...
we call them the PLATOON... there's about 40 or so
"banana boat" folk... Daniel is the guy who conjured
up the expression: black don't crack...
what does that mean? you can't tell a black person's
real age... since you can be looking at a black
person who's 50... and you'd guess their age
to be 30... black don't crack...
i really think cosmetic industries should look into
the genome of both black people and people
with downs syndrome: those ******* hardly age...
you can't tell if there's a wrinkle on them...
seriously!
                  white boy humour... white boy
British humour... i'm writing this in complete earnest...
it's not even a joke: well... it's funny in a conversation
when you can crack jokes without a CCTV crow
on your shoulder...
so we cracked jokes about the PLATOON...

Daniel played that famous video of the ventriloquist
with that Ahmed the dead suicide bomber
puppet: I **** YOU...
i laughed on the verge of tears...
it's almost like that Dave Chapel sketch about
uniforms: a woman all tarts and no choux pastry
stuff... and Dave's like: pretending to be a police officer:
excuse me, ma'am... i may be dressed as a police officer!
but it doesn't mean that i am, a police officer!
or Team American's Durka Durka: Muhammad Jihad...
i just said to Daniel: are any of these ***** from
Rotherham? where? oh you know...
that Rotherham grooming gang scandal...
i'd love to get my hands on one of those *****...

a former prisoner officer talking to a former
chemistry student... seriously... those organic chemistry
schematics of electron migration were a bit pointless:
until i realised: they showed me loopholes in
the language... call it the rearrangement of vowels
and consonants... absolutely ridiculous:
since all theory and very little practice...

oh sure... the PLATOON was there...
i started it calling it SLOW-IQ from cousin-*******...
which is true... you have to start calling out
taboos at some point...
i mean: these guys were slow...
Ha-HMED! hark the H... draw a longer breath
and forget that the R was ever associated with a trill
of a rattlesnake...
oh sure... we get sold that puny story-detail
of low testosterone levels in European men....
these days? i was signing them in...
i had to ask 2 or 3 times for them to repeat their names:
they spoke their names so delicately
i couldn't understand them...
and i'm the one who picks up sounds...
my auditory hallucinations sometimes speak louder
than these people, "these people"...

i checked up on some theory...
the length ratio of the index finger to the ring finger...
i look at my left hand... then at my right hand...
oh **** me... no wonder...
i'm a *******... a promiscuous *******...
my ring finger is much longer than my index finger:
much longer on my left hand than my right hand...
ergo? a shorter index finger implies higher levels
of testosterone...
   am i to be, now, what? self-congratulatory...
no... it's intrinsic ontology: i can't help what i am...
just like i can't help with being a raw-red Caucasian
in mentality that's deviant from the British-compact
model...

i cleaned the house in the morning really focusing
on repeating the song My Friends by
the Red Hot Chilli Peppers...
hey... listen... if these ******* have the audacity to
march in with their mosques... blow themselves up for
no grand attaching reason to further each and every one
of our plights: again... life isn't that terrible...
reality isn't unshakeable: unmoveable...
only people unto people make this life difficult:
usually out of complacency... laziness...
a solipsism that doesn't begin to factor in a fact
that solipsism could be a theory: a testing ground
of understanding autism...

but i abhor these Oxford shifts...
i leave them spent... the egress is magic though...
i'm more time-wasting than time-investing...
i still don't understand how inflation works
and i still don't understand why deflation doesn't exist...
the worth of goods increases:
but the method of producing these goods stays
the same... i have to admit...
i'm thinking about going out of my comfort zone...
looking into the thinking of economists
and not philosophers...
after all, my name was once allocated
to one famous tax-collector...
                     mind you: i like thinking about money...
not that i have a stash of it...
just enough to enjoy thinking about it...
i like thinking about money because i don't think
about spending it like most people do:
like most people who spend it frivolously and therefore
don't have enough of it and therefore
are in debt: these people are in debt because
they spend money on credit...
i have money, because i spend money on debit...

i couldn't never allow myself to accept a credit based
system of expenditures...
it made no sense to me: sure, you have more protection
using a credit card than a debit card...
after all the current system focuses more on creditors
than it does on debtors... then again: like for like...
you need less creditors than debtors:
you actually require more people in debt than
those willing to provide credit...
but then there are people like me who hyper-focus
on an earning-spending dynamic who
avoid building up too much credit:
by not building too much credit...
you can't exactly build up your... "debit score rating":
there's no "debit score" rating...
money turns into water...
you behave like your wallet if a dam...
that's a "metaphor" for savings and expenditure...

it's impossible for me to spend on credit...
why? i can't earn on credit:
well... i can earn on credit of my performance:
but that's a different sort of credit:
it's a credit i earn... rather than spend...
but i spend exclusively on debit...
on the basis of a debt i'm owned for my work...
i like money...
in philosophy there's that scared word: THING...
and NOTHING...
in economics there's that word too: MONEY...
and NO-MONEY...
oddly enough nothing is a categorised as a pronoun
while thing is categorised as a noun...
ergo? money is a noun and no-money
is a pronoun...

                    it's not even about being poor...
broke-***... it's about having enough money to do...
whatever the hell you want...
without a co-dependant... no woman: no children...
i can ******* from a shift... ask to be dropped
off at a petrol station... rather than the usual pick-up
spot... buy a £3 platter of sushi...
three ciders... a 10 packet of cigarettes...
eat... smoke a cigarette... then take at least two
bottles of cider dancing into the night...
i used to love swimming... now? if it's not cycling
it's walking... esp. come the night...

there's nothing quiet like it...
i hate these Oxford shifts... if it wasn't for the humour
i don't think i would have ever bothered...
focus on perception...
it's all about the TILT of the EARTH...
from the winter months and the summer months...
i was admiring the night thinking about
just that... this one... constellation...
in the summer months she's up-close...
you can see her enlarged (yeah?
things in English are generally asexual...
but you can ascribe *** to them...
like in most sensible tongues of the European
continent, there can be a sense of
the masculine and the feminine in nouns...
there's no need for gender-neutral pronouns...
there can exist gender-provocative nouns...
constellations are feminine)

   right... so there's this one jaw-dropper
of a constellation...
it's massive in the summer-time...
can't miss it... what the naked eye can't miss:
the mind ought to write about...

you know the constellation i'm talking about:
during the summer months it's enlarged...
but during the winter months it's squeezed into
its compact representation:
it's the same ******* constellation...
but since the earth is tilted on its axis...
that tilt generates a "disparity" of vision...
it's microscopically viewed in the summer months
and macroscopically viewed in the winter
months... when you sometimes walk the night
streets... tilt your head left to right...
and watch a bonanza of frost settling on the pavement
like it might be the glitter of paparazzi's cameras
eventing a strobe light effect of frost
glitter paving your honoured walk back
to a cold bed where only you or perhaps a cat might
be sleeping in...

no... it's not the constellation of cancer:
it's the constellation of scorpio:

                    •
                •
            •

­                   •
                      •
                          .
           ­                                  •

    •

that's most definitely a scorpion...
the tail... the torso... and the two pincers
extending...
but i'm not referring to the constellation
of scorpio... i'm refferering
to...the trapezium with a tail...

the big and little wheelbarrow constellation are
one and the same...


                        •


                                                                ­            •
                                            •


                                                 •                  •


it just depends on how the earth tilts...
call it her the little and big wheelbarrow...
microscopic in the realm of summer:
macroscopic in the realm of winter...
not a rhombus with a tail?
and what about the constellation of
scorpio...

three days by: Jane's Addiction...
always with the bass guitar that gets me...
now admire the tilt of the earth as this one constellation
all the same moves in and out to to an even greater
focus... "flat earth" expert as myself
ought to know... knowing one's own geometrics of
not having the luxury of parodying
movements that
demand the rigours of traffic...
such is a man's luxury of trailing behind night...
trailing behind dreams:
behind dreaming...
such is this world: that affords me so much
luxury... so little mediocracy...
            
tonight i brought back an acorn...
no... i wish i brought back an albino mulberry...
then again: i wish i brought back an oak conker...
but i prefer acorns more...
those hatted pebbles... oak? chestnut...
a corn that's not corns... that's acorn?
conker then... no? a nut with thoughts of
pirate X-marks-the-spot-chests?!
etymological tested grounds of frequented nouns...
hammer... table... mosquito...
            sun and moon...
                        sun as a he and moon:
although however stressed asexually: will be a she
in Ing-Leash.
Megan Parson Sep 2018
I once robbed a post-box,
      & looked through letters, small & scented.
Of someone's aunt with chickenpox,
And bills handsome, from the rented.

Love letters, I had to read!
Which in boredom, my mind would feed.
Some which made my heart bleed,
An urge to send, a nervous need.

A good doctor's prescription pill,
& injections, with dread did me fill.
Thankfully illegible, so not my joy to ****.

But now, I must stop,
For reasons purely confidential.
As I catch the Postmans' beaming top,
His light bag filled only with what's essential!
A poem on a crazy idea....
Bus Poet Stop May 2015
Restless hungry, found a tiny scrap of a brownie in the back of the refrigerator, wrapped in plastic about the size of a large 35 cent quarter.  
Gobbled up and gone.

Eye had purchased it a week ago, maybe more.  
Actually it was more like eye was held up at gunpoint by a sad young face for a large and green single dollar Bill.
In return, was bequeathed said brownie eye dropper-ful.

The  apartment I live in a big city, many apartments were recession empty for a long time.  But in the last few years, the empty apartments in the building were almost all sold to foreigners.  
Now the bldg is an amulet melted of the lucky overseas fortunate, those overseers overseas seizers, who come to reside in the most fabulous site in these United States...and buy a piece of the dream away from the be-headers, secret police or governments that decide you are now an enemy of the state, as of this morning. No judgement.

anyway, this doe eyed child of estimated six or eight years of age accosts me in our large lobby, proffers me the brownie scrap for a Bill.

me a sucker of a salesman myself, and an eye affician-doe, well those doefuls, those eyes, no one could resist!

so eye asked her name,
but all she could say in
Anglais was...

"Brownie One Dollar?"

laughing out loud for no apparent cause,
the hanging about lobbyists looked at me staring...
Why was eye laughing?

laughing cause eye realized
this elfin child had become
fitfully but fully Americanized.

and I loved her eyes in mine, and when I see her periodically, I say:

"Hey! Brownie One Dollar, How are ya!"

and everyone snicker smiles at the old man with the even stupider grin upon his eyes.

That would be eye.
Drinking the vin in vignette
brownie salesman
her profitability now legendary, she travels in a pack and woe be to the poor fool entrapped in an elevator surround by fawns with a hungry look in their eyes....
JJ Hutton Dec 2012
I'm a bald man now. Ever read the Book of Job? I like how he copes. The change is not purely aesthetic. That bothers me. When people cut their hair, tan their bodies, or lose weight for the sole purpose of hearing blinking friends and distant cousins say you've changed.

I'm sorry to hear about Tim's dad. I'm sure he'll get better. I'd say, I'm glad you two are getting back to normal, but I don't feel optimistic enough to lie. Tonight, I'm tending to a toothache. Covering one end of a cocktail stirrer, dipping it in scotch, and using it as a medicinal dropper. After typing that sentence, I realized the absurdity of this situation. Trading surgical for savage pulls from the bottle.

Heather came over on Halloween. I ran a bath for her. She nursed a fading cigarette while sitting on the edge of the sink and with a wet paper towel wiped off her stage makeup. She told me she had twelve piercings. Then she said people usually ask her where they're at. Some information reveals itself.

I could hear hummed melodies through the wall as she bathed, as I made my bed. Lit three candles. Sprayed some Febreze to cover the stench of my existence. She came in wearing my robe. Without makeup, she looked boyish. Lost, angry.

Her breathing didn't comfort me. She drifted to sleep quickly. As bizarre as it sounds, I could feel Karen in the room. She was the moving shadows. She was the branches scraping against the house. She was the light I left on in the closet. To spite her, I woke Heather up.

I traced her piercings like a holy diary pressed in brail. I sank teeth into hipbone. Sharpened. The *** was short. To be expected, I suppose. Three years of celibacy. She told me it surprised her that it took me this long to sleep with her.

Why did you let me? I asked.

Heather smiled a waving tightrope. Confident. Off-balance. She said I was warm. I was predictable. Like a country music song. I gave her my back. Turned on the television.

I haven't talked to her since. The thing about being born again is, sometimes when you've think you've died, you've only had a bad dream. A more final death lurks. Let's hope she killed me. Now, bald like an idiot babe, I'll try to start. No vanity. You were right. The adventure kicks off when I learn to love myself. Looking at the uneven bumps on my shaved head, I've already developed a crush. I'll apologize in my next letter.
Bus Poet Stop Apr 2015
this is not a ten stepper essay.  You are, and you admit it, full stop. Addicted to HP.  No help here.

but to answer the question...

the writing of a poem,
no matter what your style,
eye dropper word selection,
slow methodical,
or furious expelling, frying oil
until crescendo is achieved
is clearly a fulfillment of
a ****** type of need.

Afterwards,
after words,
when you repeatedly
check the number of likes,
it is just you asking me

was it as good for you
as it was for me?

Usually, eventually,
the answer is a
quiet, soft spoken,
very few reads version of:

"Uh, just let me sleep"
which means you will try again
in the the morning suncomeforth.
eye put the vin in vignettes
April Hapner Jun 2015
i saw the little bird flutter
dance from dropper to dropper
and the image fades in the clouds of smoke.

Nay, the lines show on my worked hands,
the trouble in life,
where i stand...
this line i drew in the sand is nothing like the life in lines
read in palmistry
or the scars emotionally
those that developed, enveloped and disappeared
as a decade passed into another year.

my reflection in the mirror changed,
the migraines are no longer the inspiration that drives me.
on auto pilot, driven by fire, flames were fanned and told to flourish.

now there will be a change in the line up
because ****-up-to-****-up there is no other way
i could say how much more in less than the 8 hours a day--
of work, of solitude, once i which came of use to?

well life, if you are a mirror,
then *******! i was told i was done too...

with the ashes settled, i'm at home.
he is still a little wobbly, a little toddly, and oh the  "NO!"
into the cabinets i find, a flicker of life,
desire,
****-- i am sold.
i found out what in the world...
i am here for.

Sixty, ***-ti.... i cannot form a single thought,
a heartfelt thought and ones of revenge
as the heater went out, and it being colder than the fridge--
i saw that little bird, fluttering,
Still

life seemed to start again,
with a push of a button
go
with all the carnival rides
flavors, and gimmicks.
i cant quit.
First, I am sorry for lack of posting. I haven't had a connection for the internet at home.
Mike West Sep 2012
Waking early in the morning and stepping out to see
The sun rise to begin, the day so beautifully
The sky was free of clouds and red off to the east
Dark blue toward the west. For my sleepy eyes a feast.
"Oh a flock of little birds flying overhead."
I couldn't help but watch them, so I tilted back my head.
Flying with great skill right over top of me.
I couldn't help but ponder "How wonderouse a thing to be."
And looking up to watch them, their beauty made me sigh
But then one bird, dropped a terd, right into my eye
It burned like a red hot poker, my eyeball was ablaze
I let out a painful cry and wiped it from my face
I tried to open my eye but the burning was too great
And now those little frikin' birds, I really began to hate
I swore to get revenge on that nasty little bird
That had the gall to bullseye me with it's frikin' terd
So I went to a store and purchased me a gun
A semi auto twelve gage, that should get 'er done
I purchased fifty shells each one filled with bird shot.
And hoped to **** that little bird and watch it's body rot.
So later in the evening of that very day
With a patch over my eye to keep the pain away
I formed the perfect plan to get my sweet revenge
And blow away that flying band in a ****** killing binge
I got up extra early and went outside and stayed
Very quiet so as not to ruin my vengful killing raid.
And just as I had hoped, like yesterday at this time.
"Here they come!" I thought with glee "Vengence will be mine!"
And just as they did yesterday, they flew right over head
And I chuckled to myself, "That sucker's gonna be dead!"
And as they came within my range, anticipation grew dire
Jumping up, I started yelling, and with my gun opened fire
"DIE YOU LITTLE TERD DROPPER!" Insanely I exclaimed
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! seven lives I quickly claimed
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! I Fired and more did fall
I looked again, and checking, I saw I'd killed them all.
And as I stood there looking at the little birds I'd killed
I asked myself, "Was it worth it? Was my revenge fulfilled?"
And as I contemplated these feelings that I had
A certain guilt came over me and I started to get sad.
But suddenly, in my eye, there was an awful burn
And I then knew I was right to **** them in return.
glass can May 2013
"I don't know just where I'm going"

Arms encircled around porcelain, clean,
wavering strength, and eyes closing feebly

"when I'm rushing on my run, and I feel just like jesus son"

There are many more people than I want to see.
I pull up against the wall and, for balance, I lean

"and I guess that I just don't know, and I guess that I just don't know."

whiskey, for the Father
marijuana, for the Son
prescriptions, just for me

"I have made the big decision, I'm gonna try and nullify my life"

Still though, Lou Reed isn't dead, just clean
and so, this night, just won't bode well for me

"it shoots up the dropper's neck, when I'm closing in on death"

It is hard to remain dignified when in a wasted state, vomiting.

"You can't help me now guys, all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk"

It is hard to remain dignified when someone attacks my integrity.

"And you can all go take a walk"

It is hard to remain dignified when I am acting so senselessly.

"Oh, and I guess that I just don't know,
oh, and I guess that I just don't know "

I try to sleep through,
while foreign fingers swirl softly on my sides, to feel my *******.

"And that blood is in my head,
then thank God that I'm as good as dead"

I try to sleep through,
while a small ring lies atop of a postcard, with an Indian head.

"then thank your God that I'm not aware,
and thank God that I just don't care"

I guess, I just don't know.

"and I guess I just don't know
and I guess I just don't know."*

after the echo, I need to leave.
so I go, again, and press repeat.
Play the song, through.
David Zavala Dec 2018
it's visual anthropology, I swear.
it's everything can't you see!?
I'm on my bed.

I had a great dream about you,
I'll even say it, you said you'd make love to me,
so I anxiously listened to Pull My Daisy by Allen Ginsberg afterwards, he certainly was mad but was genius but I do care about my health, though.

So, I ordered the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Lincoln said a lot, he advanced a conversation but appeared to lord over the common man, the man who works in the field, the man who goes to war to fight. Martin Luther King didn't say much, although Common says freedom is free.

I smoked a cigar and poured some orange juice, too. I can now smell the cigar and enjoy orange juice. I saw a white bug outside and felt deep. The specific kind, unknowable. I'm nervous tho' about today. I have to be up at five AM. I could sleep more but I won't, instead I'll write a clear and coherent prose-poem about the circus because I do care about my health. I will love myself and maybe take a shower because I do care about my health. Molly Casey, who knows, I forgive you if you forgive me, and if whoever said "ugh" apologizes, I'll be happy. But first, or later, we'll have to  accept that life is unfair, and that you have to be professional to make it through.

Here, look it, I'll tell you everything and more, and all the time, if you tell me I'm sane and beautiful.

How badly do you want bad? I want bad, sometimes. I want good more often that's why I do this dear Molly Casey. And when you said you'd sleep with me, did you think? No, I don't think you thought and I don't think you mean it. No, when you said you'd make love to me, in my dream, did you think? No, I don't think you did. But know, you inspired me. As a conciliation for my inability to be profound, or for being too profound, or too much of a thinker, or for being overly cautious, I want you to know that biology is interesting and that when I write several words down in my poem book and in my phone to use later, I think I'm working.

Here are those words:

1. faced
2. changed
3. is
4. cognitive
5. multiple
6. vision
6. droplet
7. positive everyday experience
8. I lie
9. ought to listen to that song
9. cause
10. zeal
11. prudence
12. in the dust
13. self-criticism
14. work
15. chill Castro
16. not SA - SF although SA isn't bad
17. me
18. my friends
19. All encompass dropper
20. Only human
21. All too human

2:38 AM December 12th 2018
Still Crazy Jun 2014
for Beau

this mixte bag of nutty facts,
compote of this's and that's,
fragrant but yucky tasting potpourri,
sordid assortment of
seemingly unseemly
random collection of
facts, whoppers,
recipes and formulae, and his 'n her
stories (my fav!)
useless motorized drivel,
running around my head

that you have with me creme-filled,
data conglomerated,
transformed by mongol hordes of grey cells
urged on, nay transformed,
by **** and beer into
a magnificent miscellaneous mile of jumble,
virtuous and verifiable grab bag of
ever so humble,
tuneful melodies of a medley of
snatches and patches
of Jagger and Liszt,
a verifiable pastiche of
vital and downright dumb
Factors and Factoids,

I thank you suchly muchly*

musta taken years, maybe even
decades to collect and codify,
this assemblage of verifiable factoids,
after-all, took you twelve to
feed me in eye dropper ingestible quantities!

though with Wiki this and Wiki that,
I coulda save us all some time,
and since it is all on the Internet,
and any way 99% I forgot
like a cell phone number

no matter, I can reads and counts
and writes term papers downloaded,
but caught my eye you wrote
of a mutton stew denominated as
hotchpotch,
but we variant truants,
ici, aux Etats-Unis, on dit
and spell our salmagundi as
hodgepodge

but in summary summation,
thanks for teaching me creative thinking,
for without this skill,
I would but be,
a tool
of Wikipedia
and not its creator

P.S.  It's gadzooks,
not gad zooks,
according to Wikitionary,
even them Oxford fellas agree,
tee hee,
you could look it up
on the internetsky,
Teach....
Gigi Tiji Sep 2014
I think I just needed
some Space to myself
so I snatched up the Telescope
off of the shelf

Fogbound, an Envelope
Packed with Parched Paper
Periwinkle Periscope
Crepuscular Vapor

permanent figures
a vial and dropper
kaleidoscope lens
a beaker and stopper
thea pedersen Jun 2015
Hvis du dropper
historien om,
at noget er svagt,
og noget andet er stærkt,
så er der ikke noget,
der er bedre end andet,
og du kan være dig selv
- ligesom du er -
hver eneste gang.
en lille reminder på en blæsende juni-dag som denne
Barton D Smock Feb 2014
we’ll start here, turtle.

this is what I say to the grey thing I’ve been talking to.

the only buffer between engagement & constant engagement
is life
during wartime.

I conceive of a dropper
but hold it empty
above my eye.

because it is the one word without a beginning

suffering
because it is the one word without a beginning
is not limited
by its
vocabulary.

we wanted a sophisticated god
but in immediate
unison
called it
god.

this is the grey cream  
that gives her privacy.

I am drawn to a sort of journalism
by association, a campestral formlessness
attached
for example
to the term

carpet bombing.  

how is death, here?  in an orange ball of yarn

she is not ahead of?

she has to stop, turtle.

to declaw an electrocuted kitten
she didn’t
electrocute.
He had to get it anyhow
But the sleepy Sunday afternoon
Found all the shutters down

He had to get it anyhow
But a sad figure on the empty street
His sighs in himself drowned

He needed to get it anyhow
But it seemed fortune didn’t care
It couldn’t be ever found

He needed to get it anyhow
But his tries ended in despair
A life could bow out

If only he could get it anyhow
That small thing now priceless
He would forever treasure

If only he could get it anyhow
It would prolong a heartbeat
Reviving drops he could measure

On the sleepy Sunday afternoon
In search of a one penny dropper
A man a poet a philosopher
Was thwarted came a cropper!
A dropper to give a dying bird the measured dose of life saving medicine!
Josh Bass Oct 2014
Rainy days and Mondays
Piloting my car like a
river boat captain
on a shiny Mississippi
It is morning but still dark
an eye dropper of blue has
been added to the sky
and what was once black
has now slowly spread to purple
A purple macchiato in the atmosphere

I pass by a convenient store
It looks like an oasis in the dark rain
Soft blue lights reflecting on wet asphalt, illuminated marquee
an old cinematographer trick  

This is my time
This is where I live
This is me.
My true self
before,
I am stained by work
Drive to work
Barton D Smock May 2014
z.
I will do my best to remember in order these the prayers satan has returned to the adult me...

(please help me to absorb the paranoia of my uncle who
after putting a clear piece of tape on his belly button

drinks
too much)

(please make her hair fall out)

(invisibility)

(tell god but take your time)

(a secret brother.  a brother I can beat on.)

(power over girls I want nothing to do with)

(a job my mom can turn down)

(muscles that make me high)

(pain in the useless privates of my guardian angel)

(the best birdhouse)

(a grandfather or a frog, or both, with teeth)

(a nativity scene built around a piece of spat out gum)

(comic book with ******* scarecrow)

(a baby sister
to radio
my mother’s
coma)

(messenger stones)

(a double
where my hands
can sleep)

(the last dropper
of dinosaur
woe)

(Eve whose ears have amnesia)

(you, from my past)
aurpera Feb 2014
You marmalade dropper, you.
You cause an enfilade with the briefest of your words, my love.
You cislunar beauty.
Let me watch you. Make me your auspex.
Stravaig through my heart.
Be your flagitious best with me.
Noctivagants, you and I.
Steal a pimpmobile. Let's run away.
marmalade dropper: n. Highly stunning information, especially when associated with the news.
enfilade: n. Gunfire directed along the length of a target, such as a column of troops.
cislunar: adj. Situated between the earth and the moon.
auspex: n. One who divines by observing the motions, cries, etc., of birds; a diviner in general; an augur.
stravaig: v. To stroll, meander.
flagitious: adj. Extremely brutal or cruel
noctivagant: adj. Going about in the night; night-wandering.
pimpmobile: n. A flashy oversize automobile used by or deemed suitable for use by a ****.

{definitions from wordnik.com}
Kurt Carman Feb 2017
As Sunday wakes, I watch the sunrise
Peaking over the yawning Sawtooth Range.

Idaho's Rocky Mountain loving arms wide open
Stretch to embrace the East fork of the Salmon

It’s at this bend I feel the need to take in
All the wonderment, that emerges to take my breath away.

I load my rod and chart a path for my line,
As I spot two survivors, drifting in and out of the undercut.

Feeling good about this, I offer up a clodhopper,
It drifts by unacknowledged, not even a balk.

WTH I think to myself, as I tie on a dropper,
And make one last presentation…………….

“Well I’ll be ******, never seen a trout yawn.”


- K.E. Carman 2017
Jay earnest May 2017
there's a syringe filled to the dropper with ******

and a blackened spoon on the kitchen counter.

he was in the bathroom shooting up and left this one for later
but in a daze
forgot to consider
that others would be home early.

i didn't care.

i've stepped on many ***** syringes before
and as a child
poked myself by accident
a few times as well.

i don't have hepatitis luckily
but to me
it was just an annoying prickly receptacle

full of enough intoxicant to be
lethal to any person
without a tolerance.

i just banged on the door.

''hey if i see this ****
again
i'll break your arm''.

i heard faint mumble from within
and left him to get high.

he was going to leave within the next day or two any way.

must be fun,
and millions are having fun,


why bother them?

they know what they're doing
it's just
the lack of respect i don't appreciate.

and the fact that they get to **** themselves in plain view
while
we die
oftentimes in slower subtler ways
Baylee Apr 2014
"Turn around,
Shut your mouth,
Sit up straight,
Don't look around.
Be a lady,
That's not ladylike,
Don't dress that way,
You look like a ****.
Hold your chin up,
That's not high enough,
Now that's too high,
Don't make this tough.
Just do things right,
Won't you learn,
Do it perfect,
Or you shall burn.
Don't let this scare you,
Just be proper,
If your eyes get red,
Use the eye dropper.
Brush your teeth,
And brush them well,
If they aren't white enough,
You'll go to hell.
Comb your hair,
Get all the knots out,
Just listen to me,
And I won't have to shout.
Just be pretty,
Just be perfect,
It's not that hard,
And it's definitely worth it.
No one likes,
Girls with braids,
Or buns, or ponytails,
Those aren't cool these days.
Powder your face,
Oily skin is a no-no,
Leave your face bare,
And you'll look like a hobo.
Stay in fashion,
And in style,
And you'll fit in,
For a while.
Until they notice your personality,
Sad as it may be,
You need to be different than yourself,
Heck, be more like me.
The more alike we all are,
The better it will be,
Because we'll stop being, him and her,
And we'll start being we."
Barton D Smock Sep 2015
from father, footrace, fistfight (poems, June 2014)

(available on Lulu)

duologue

we’ll start here, turtle.

this is what I say to the grey thing I’ve been talking to.

the only buffer between engagement & constant engagement
is life
during wartime.

I conceive of a dropper
but hold it empty
above my eye.

because it is the one word without a beginning

suffering
because it is the one word without a beginning
is not limited
by its
vocabulary.

we wanted a sophisticated god
but in immediate
unison
called it
god.

this is the grey cream
that gives her privacy.

I am drawn to a sort of journalism
by association, a campestral formlessness
attached
for example
to the term

carpet bombing.

how is death, here? in an orange ball of yarn

she is not ahead of?

she has to stop, turtle.

to declaw an electrocuted kitten
she didn’t
electrocute.



isochronal character

the theme of this person-to-be is footprint.  for years I hated my figure and for years I went undetected.  I had female heroes both sad and sad reboots.  for a fee one told me I was fleeting.  the fee included the thumbtack moon my heel had liberated from a schoolchild’s diorama.  we come as babies so none can ask us what we remember.  the theme of this person-as-is

is mouthpiece.  her red phone has been tapped by those my blood is filming.


impossible beast

the whole town was in the parade. the newer babies had a float to themselves. at some point I was shot by a gunman so disoriented he mistook himself for my father. I swooned as if trying to avoid landing on a board member second-guessing her proposed location for purgatory. somewhere in the darkness the firehouse caught fire. I followed my blood but to me it seemed a celebrity’s sadness. my mother found me in her bed with a part of her heart. she was bright with the rumor that my sister’s snake-bitten neck had some takers.
Rachel Ueda Nov 2014
It use to be the color of the sea
At the surface, it was light as could be
Calm, like the sky, the sweetest high.
Did it make me see or did it make me believe, the difference is so little it's hard to concede its existence without a little futile resistance. Go deeper, go darker, more intense, feels a little starker. This is the middle, where the cat plays the fiddle. It looks like velvet but feels of familiar cotton. Smells just comfortably rotten. You've almost forgotten the color of the sky... Was that really the sweetest high? Here you can't even feel the time go by. It does however, have quite an annoying why It's festers and pesters occasionally but I cage it with my in sane ity. Pulse drops, blood stops. What happened? I was coming up for air and .... I got pulled deeper into its lair. You look around for he who dare make you victim, with boiling anger the beast gets sicker. You want to hear the heart stopper? The jaw dropper? There is no monster. You weren't pulled in, you fell in. You were blind this entire time, why is reality so unkind? Days turn into years, fear forgets those tears. So unsettled, living a lie, the blackest of kettles. You are at the bottom of the ocean, drank Ursulas  potions, thought it was wine ? Now look what you've left behind. The fruit of life has become a rind. Now what? Will you hold onto your breathe and swim to the top, or is this where it stops ?
Feedback wanted !! Thx
each dawn I rouse
increasingly light(er)
like midnight realized
she dosed me improper
siphoned back sludge
in the IV dropper
and daybreak snuck
pre-op biotics
that kick in as
I flutter

I feel
the veil

lift.

and guise of years inside
you’re sanitized from the outside
custom toxin bubble confined

pop
and deflate

I’ve been guarding me
for so long.

after you live in prison
upon your release, you still
put walls around yourself
don’t trust don’t trust don’t
believe

anyone

is.
safe.

your create bars
to stay that way
just like home
penitentiary

that tucked you in
told you howwherewhen
you didn’t get to
make decisions
you didn’t
belong

to you.

then when on your own
you still don’t feel you
belong to anyone

I was so used
to playing small
I kept shrinking me
habitually

but
I. am.

uncontainable
and part always
of the all

as love culture multiplies
in open air beyond
illusory bars

I look up so high
level with my own
open eye

realize I’ve been
sitting under a table
in the broom closet

when I coulda been mingling
in the party just outside
where lights don’t chase, just
reflect iridescent cocktail dress

and there is laughter
with not one nanosecond
false, forced or choreographed

for the bones just know
and move
in song
Madeline Mar 2020
I found the strange ones, the quirky, the broken. I never thought of myself as any of those things, but maybe I found them because some small part of me knew even then that I was broken, too.  

I still think about her. In the strangest moments, my favorite memories pop into my head. Certain smells, certain emotions, certain songs, they all put me right back there. In the ignorant bliss of my youth. Racing across the movie theater parking lot in the pouring rain, because Mom always said that rainy days were the best for movies. Walking down the marble halls of the Science Museum, looking at geodes in the black-lit display cases. Watching the pendulum swing and learning about gravity, that force that makes the world turn and aligns the planets. The very same that couldn't keep her mind here on earth with the rest of us. The same that keeps this ******* sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach. Her voice reading me to sleep, the smell of Estee Lauder perfume wrapping around my small body every time I got sad or frustrated. Her hand rubbing my back when the monsters crept their way down the hall or out of my closet and I couldn't sleep. Placing a cool rag on the back of my neck when I was sick. But it's that smell of rain that gets me every time. We're right back there running through the parking lot. Or maybe we're sitting in the living room watching the storm pass, feeling it shake the house. It was my favorite smell until recently. It smells like grey and like your soul's lifting right out of your body and up into the dewy air and it is total peace. Rain is the smell that makes the world okay. The water droplets racing along the windows of the car.  

Mental Illness doesn't come crashing over you like guilt does, in those cold, salty tear-drenched waves. It's slow. Like if someone were to take an eye dropper and add ink to blood. It's dark the way blood is so you don't even realize it's there at first. By the time it catches up to you, by the time it's noticeable, your whole ******* system has been infiltrated with inky blood, choking out the oxygen or the happiness or whatever is in there that makes you who you are.

— The End —