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Jamie L Cantore Jan 2017
Words Studied For This Writing:
------------------------------------
English: Zoup, please.
What it sounds like in German: Die Zoup bitte "Or" The Zoup? Bitter.
English: Uh, the night tea is great!
Pronounced in German sounds like: Eww. Is nachte. It's Gros "Or" Eww! Is nasty! It's gross!
English: Here.
Pronounced in German: Here.
English: Ha! I see an icky Sir's downin' Zoup.
German: Huh? - Ick- Taste. -Sie - An Icky herran down en Zoup
English:Yes.
German: Ja "Or" yeah
English: Skinny rides here. Skinny? Hmm.. horseback.
German: Dunne fahrten hier, Dunne. Hmm?  Holtzit back! Or.. Do not **** in here; do not! Hmm?  Holds it back!
English: Oh! I beg!
German: Oh! Ich bitte "Or" Oh! It's better!
English: Come back, Father.....
German: Comeback, Vatter "Or" Come back, Fatter
English: Nexxinline
German: Next in line.


Let's make a story with this .

First Act

-Enter Customer 2 in an American diner. She orders a
unique zebra-flavored soup called Zoup, created on American soil, but it's claimed to have had its origins in a restaurant located in Worms, Germany; as per usual proud fashion.

Customer 2 to Rude Waitress: "Zoup, please."

She sipped the complimentary drink placed before her as she awaited her order. Iced tea, ***** glass. It was reportedly their best tea, brewed by the Barista on the night-shift, whom did only speak in broken English and Spanish. Therefore, when the customer enjoyed her tea, she was glad it was nightfall and privy to the better drink and expressed her approval.

Customer 2 to Night-Shift Barista in simplified language:

"Uh, the night tea is great!"

The Barista nods politely.

Rude Waitress, apparently jealous because she makes the Day-shift tea, is curt to Customer 2:


"Here." she growled, slamming the Zoup on the table.

Things get quiet.

Just then, Customer 2 recognizes a crusty man who claims to have been knighted in a former life before joining a Native American tribe. She addresses him sardonically.

Customer 2 to Crusty Man

:
"Ha!" " I see an icky Sir's downin' Zoup!"

Crusty Man responds, unmoved:

"Yes."

Customer 2 cautioned him that he was being tracked by the infamous international assassin, Skinny.

Customer 2 to Crusty Man in mock Native American tongue:


"Skinny rides here ...

Crusty Man: "Skinny?"


Customer 2 (deepening voice)

"Mmm, horseback."

She makes gestures with her hands of a man riding a horse.
And follows it up with mimicking a successful hit on Crusty Mans life, complete with tongue hanging out of mouth.

The rude waitress then pleads to a deceased priest aloud to return to save them whilst making holy gestures frantically.

Rude Waitress to a deceased Holy Man:

"Oh!" "I beg." "Come back, Father...
Father Nexxinline?"

End First Act


This Final Act was created using the same exact words used in the English language, those in  quotations that is, as were in the First Act: but then translating them into German, the conversation then became a bit more humorous. The Background was filled in to fit the context of the meaning of the words sonic qualities, as certain German words sound similar to English words, though they generally have different meanings. The German word sounds brought a whole new meaning to the English words spoken, and with this contrast I finished the Final Act. Since most do not know how to pronounce certain words and dialects of German language, I took the sounds created within the language and converted them to English words of phonetic similarity. These words were not translated back to English, as that would put the conversation exactly where it began -I rather made them easier to perceive.

Background Final Act/. Skinny from First Act is now in a diner in Worms, Germany, (pronounced like Vorms with  a V.)

We begin with Skinny's response to being asked how is the Zoup by the German Waiter.

Skinny dryly to German Waiter: "The Zoup?" "Bitter."

He takes another spoonful into his mouth.

Skinny: "Ewww!"  "Is nasty!" "It's gross!"

Skinny to German Waiter in disgust: "Here!"

And he pushes the bowl of Zoup into the waiters face.


German Waiter to Skinny expressing consternation

: "Huh?"

Skinny commands him: "Taste!"

The waiter does so reluctantly and winces in clear disgust.

Skinny:

"See?" " Icky heron down in Zoup!"

German Waiter to Skinny knowing German Zoup  is flavored with heron, not zebra, and failing to see the point retorts

: "Yeah?"

Skinny then crude and vengeful 'expresses' a good one from his basest dwelling silently; but deadly with a grin. It was a most foul smell.

The waiter is exasperated with this crudeness and makes commands of his own.

German Waiter to Skinny

:
"Do not **** in here!" 'Do not!"" Hmm?"  "Holds it back!"

The odor horrid reached culmination with another waft of steam from Skinny and  resulted in the excommunication of Skinny.
Skinny yet found himself vindicated and agreed to leave the establishment as was demanded. As he exits in self satisfaction, our waiter tells him not to forget his Zoup and the prideful waiter Stolz mocks him in jest by spooning a mouthful into his jabbering jowls, as he does, he turns pale and ill and silenced, reassuring Skinny he had a reason to be disappointed.

The German Waiter refusing to admit defeat tells him:


"Oh, it's better!" Referring to his bias to the Zoup from Worms, which should be renamed Houp, but the words don't translate that way.

THEN Stolz realized his best customer, Skinny's hefty brother, Fatter, was running out the door in an attempt to escape the stench which lingered and but grew in force, and the waiter pleaded with him to return.

German Waiter to Skinny's brother:

"Come back, Fatter!" but Fatter kept running and giggling sophomorically.

The German Waiter to a diner full of people gasping for fresh air and no desire for Zoup at this moment said in defeatist sheepishness, gulping before asking wishfully... pouting, whispering:


"Next in line?"
Mike Eustace Sep 2014
I drank once,
from the deep well of sleep
when cool waters refreshed this parched earth,
now barren without nourishing dreams.
My worries grow futile shoots
in the hardpack, they wither and die.
Ashes scattered dryly
fuel further frets.
This drought is not over.
Today I feel the weary from a night made sleepless by worry.  This poem sums up how stark my worries seem while the house is alseep.  Insomnia is a cruel mistress who deprives me of the luxury of vivid dreams.
Lunar Mar 2016
It was a rainy night. He took out his umbrella, opened it, and it soon engulfed the both of us. "Hey, you're getting wet," he said. He pulled me closer to him, his arms like the umbrella protecting me, protecting us from the drizzle.

I snapped out of my daydream to find him weirdly staring at me, and asked him, "What, do I have something on my face?"

"No, it's just... why are you staring into space?"

Our footsteps made little splashes, puddles reflected a thousand images of us. These pictures from nature will not last for a lifetime but the rain was our witness, as if the skies were crying at a matrimonial ceremony.

I took a step away from him to let the memory of him soak in me. He stands there in the rain innocently, with umbrella in hand, waiting for me to respond. Breathing out, I told him: "Ask me what I think of you right now."

"Wait, what? Are we going to play a game?" That usual what-is-going-on look still stupidly plastered on his angelic face. "Well, what do you think of me right now, then?"

I didn't hesitate and the first word that automatically left my lips were 'umbrella'.

"Umbrella? Do I look that thin to you, really?" He said dryly as he gave me an uninspired look. He shook his head in disbelief and pouted. "And I thought you'd relate me at least to the rain."

"Umbrella: definition for a protecting force or influence," I told him as I stood in place. I side-glanced at him to find a spark lighted up in his eyes as his shoulders loosened. "You're my umbrella because I need you in rainy days and sunny ones. Literally because of your stature to block the sun or cover me when it rains," I laughed. "And it's not because you're thin like one, silly. But how you comfortingly stretch out your arms to me when it's a bad day for me. How you guard me from others' icy remarks. It feels like a need to have you around wherever I go."

He cleared his throat jokingly and added, "Might I say I also take you high like Mary Poppins' umbrella." He burst out laughing as I glared at him for his poorly done innuendo.

But right there and then as I rolled my eyes at him, he dropped the umbrella, grabbed me by my waist and kissed me as light as the raindrops kissing our skin. He broke off after a while and said, "Getting wet, are we?"

Before I could claw at him for his second pun, he released me as I chased him down, not caring if I would get a fever later. But sometimes I just wonder how did I come to like, fall in love, and love him-- basically feel every emotion with him. In all truth, he wasn't just my umbrella, but also my home whom I'll always return to at the end of all my days. Umbrella or home, he is my shelter.
I have yet again attempted, and I don't think I went anywhere much with the ending, I'm so sorry to my readers and myself.

But yes. Wjh is my umbrella.
The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl
maintains it has no more holy calling
than physical ablution, and the towel
dryly disclaims that fierce troll faces lurk
in its explicit folds? or when the window,
blind with steam, will not admit the dark
which shrouds our prospects in ambiguous shadow?

Twenty years ago, the familiar tub
bred an ample batch of omens; but now
water faucets spawn no danger; each crab
and octopus -- scrabbling just beyond the view,
waiting for some accidental break
in ritual, to strike -- is definitely gone;
the authentic sea denies them and will pluck
fantastic flesh down to the honest bone.

We take the plunge; under water our limbs
waver, faintly green, shuddering away
from the genuine color of skin; can our dreams
ever blur the intransigent lines which draw
the shape that shuts us in? absolute fact
intrudes even when the revolted eye
is closed; the tub exists behind our back;
its glittering surfaces are blank and true.

Yet always the ridiculous **** flanks urge
the fabrication of some cloth to cover
such starkness; accuracy must not stalk at large:
each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of Eden, pretend future's shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.
In this particular tub, two knees jut up
like icebergs, while minute brown hairs rise
on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap
navigates the tidal slosh of seas
breaking on legendary beaches; in faith
we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death
shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
John F McCullagh Dec 2011
A casual glance, a gentle touch,
It stops at that, we know it must.
A chaste embrace, an offered cheek
which I dryly kiss and count it sweet.

Once we’d danced around a flame-
an older man, a willing maid.
Both comfortable in our own skin
In secret we began our sin.

I know your body like my wife’s
But she was elsewhere, I recall
Your husband, too, was on the road
When I, like Adam, had my fall.

We speak of nothings, jobs, careers,
Not of our existential fears.
Celebrity splits, Horrid crimes,
our ****** ever on our minds.

We dance like moths about a flame
which never must be lit again.
It stops at this, we know it must
a casual glance, a gentle touch.
Another version of don't ask and don't tell
Vamika Sinha Jul 2015
Little girl in a blue
snow globe.
Pressed white shirt and tartan skirt.
Hair slipping
out of a ponytail or braid or something
like that.
Laughter like a current
to be lost in by a boatman.
Her first time at the beach.
Writing
childish saltwater sonnets
in the sand with her toes.

Paper-plane sky
kisses
sea brimming
out of its seams.
Singing, on-off key,
school choir tone,
'Never Let Me Go'.
Who needs, she needs
nothing
but
the horizon
cupped
in outstretched palms.
Innocence stored
in jagged-shiny shells
waiting to be
buried
in hot, bare sand.

Time comes to shore, oceans
grow warmer,
shallow.
No more of kid braids
but a woman in
azure.
Her whole life having been
a half-moon run
out of deep, dry wells
in search of,
in search of...
in search of
what, but
hope.
Cracking oyster shells
looking for
pearls.

Time again comes to shore.
Cigarette pants for tartan skirt,
in a blue-almost-black.
Staring out
at water lapping before her,
before her, after the sky.
Before,
after.
The horizon is a pretty picture
she wants to hang
on the wall of her heart.
But she, schoolgirl trapped in snow globe,
remembers
textbook phrases like
'Humans are made up of 75%
water.'
So we are drowning every moment,
she thinks dryly.

Water within,
inevitable.
Maybe her skin or nerves or vocal cords
sensed it all those years ago
in the schoolgirl's snow globe.
Like crying, like love,
like fearing, like dying.
Shifting, receding, flowing in
and out.

Could emotions be tides she dares,
dares not
row, row,
row through?

Where did it all leak away?
Was it in the salt
running down her face?
If she is 75% water,
where has it drained
to leave the heart parched,
and her tartan days a distant drought
of memory?

Snow globe melts away.
Wade in, wade in,
have your fill,
until skin is slick
with better pain.
You told the ocean years ago,
you sang in schoolgirl choir tones,
never,
never,
never let me go.

Now it never will.
Last week, Cortney moved into a four story apartment
with seven twenty-something year old roomates, all boys.
The men share the first three floors.
while Cortney has the enire top floor to herself.
I spent the night there saturday night.
And around 10:00pm
a twenty-three year old boy
Blonde, baby faced, named Kevin Smith
stumbled drunk into Cortneys penthouse room.
Kevin smith removed his pants, and crawled into bed with us.
Kevin Smith nuzzled into my face, pulled me close, and rested his hand,
firmly on my ***.
Kevin Smiths breath smelled of ***, coffee, (and a man who regularly brushes his teeth.
Good Job Kevin Smith.)
At first, Cortney and I assumed Kevin Smith was each other.
after further, mostly-unconcious, inventory of our limbs,
we gathered this was neither the case, nor a hallucination.
Cortney flopped dryly for her cellphone and shined it's light at Kevin Smith.
"What the ****" Shouted Cortney.
No response from Kevin Smith.
"What the ****!!"
We got out of bed and put clothes on,
laughed at how ridiculous it was
that a drunk stranger just grabbed my ***,
while an unconcious Kevin Smith laid in Cortneys bed.
Kevin Smith sat up
"This is really telling. I uh..."
Cortney cut him off
"Get out."
As she turned on the light.
"Can you guys call my phone?" Asked Kevin Smith,
"No." Said Cortney
Get out of my room."
physically pushing Kevin Smith out of her room.
Cortney held up Kevin Smiths drunk zanax filled body on the stairs.
preventing Kevin Smith from otherwise falling down said stairs and dying.
Kevin Smith showed his appreciation by saying,
"High fives all around"
I watched Cortney strattle drunk Kevin Smith awkwardly, yet also motherly
down the stairs.
I leaned over the railing and high fived Kevin Smith.
"I just want you to know," mumbled Kevin Smith
you guys are my friends.
You don't need to.. I got this".
"No, you really don't" said Cortney,
"if you fall down or throw up on me
you owe me $20"
Cortney delivered Kevin Smith to his bed.
Kevin Smith mumbled something, and Cortney returned upstairs.
"What the ****?" Laughed Cortney.
"What the ****." I replied.
A true story...
What just happened.
Rangzeb Hussain Mar 2010
Long ago in shadows when the world was in magic robed,
Thus begins this tragic tale from times old,
A Mother and a bright girl did have a cottage near a hill,
On the edge of a creeping forest did they live.

Poor they were yet happy too with songs at dawn,
Nor did their stomachs in hunger churn or yawn,
Life was hard but they got by with chickens hatching hatching,
Eyes in the night always watching watching.

The Mother did always caution her delightful daughter,
“Freia, don’t be a lamb to the slaughter,
Wrap your apple blossom face from the dead eyes of dogs,
Beware the men who haunt the forest fog.”

The bright days were dreamed away in peace and solitude,
No neighbours did intrude,
Time slipped away over the misty mountains and innocent lambs,
The years ran on, so silently they ran.

One day in late autumn when Freia had maidenhood reached,
She was asked to gather wood for heat,
The days were getting shorter and the spiked nights were colder,
Shadows scratched by their door.

“Give me my red scarf quick for I want to be a girl good!
For you I will get sticks of tinder wood!”
But before she let go her dancing daughter dear
The Mother did speak of fear.

“Freia, hush and listen! Return quickly for I am in fear soaking,
Watch out for the wet croaking Water-Goblin
Who reigns and dines beneath the river and hides in woodbine,
Take heed, Lady Night upon the sky shows her signs.”

“Never fear, dear Mother wise of mine,” said Freia,
“Blind Mistress Night, ha!
She will never ever catch or lay her black claws upon me,
Just wait and see! Back I will be.”

Freia skipped and slipped into the forest loud with sound,
She was collecting wood from the ground
When an idea came darting and burrowed into her curious mind,
“There’s no Water-Goblin! It’s a tale to scare and blind.”

And to prove her Mother wrong about tales tall and long
She went to the riverbank to sing a song,
The place was dark and no bird sang in the gloomy twilight,
Bright bones upon the bank caught her sight.

A frosty wind licked her and goose-pimples did appear,
Her spine chilled and shivered,
She tried to brush off the terror in which she was crippled,
Upon the river her eyes spied a ripple.

Something was swimming and straight to her heading!
Her legs grew heavy and she stopped humming,
She stayed rooted as up her legs crawled spidery lice,
She stood like a statue carved out of ice.

Bubbles were breaking above the tar-like water ring,
The gap closing between her and the thing,
“O, why did I to this dead river come running and singing?
How I wish I was at home skipping!”

It was as if some magic older than time kept her frozen,
Freia had thus been chosen,
The gap between her and the creature was fast closing,
If only she was at home safely dozing!

She tried to shout but only dry silence puffed out,
Her eyes bulged, she was clouded in doubt,
Tears fell upon her cheeks but she still could not scream,
Cruel, O how wrong everything now seemed!

Something dark, something bleeding green greed
Crept from the water with fluid speed,
The creature from the river wrapped a long strong arm
And held Freia’s gentle palms.

“Mine!” it gurgled through gnashing sharp teeth.
“Please, no!” spoke Freia in fever’s heat.
“Bride you will be!” the scaly creature hugged and hissed,
With jagged lips he did upon Freia plant a kiss.

The Water-Goblin, for indeed it was he,
Dragged away Freia by the knee,
Into the cold and dank river he waded,
O, how his touch she hated!

“I’ll drown!” Freia screamed, “To the shore take me!”
“Please, no!” she tried to sense make him see,
“I’m sure to slip and sink and in the water drown and weep!”
“Will not,” spoke he, “Magic bubble I shall for you weave!”

He spun his murky magic and just as he had promised and hissed,
A large air bubble circled Freia’s body and hips,
He lowered her ever deeper into his Netherworld Kingdom,
Up above the sun into the horizon did drown.

The green-eyed Water-Goblin a wedding banquet did hold,
It was a hideous party truth be told,
The guests he had invited made Freia’s skin crawl,
Demons of all kinds smiled and prowled.

The poor girl dizzily danced with the greedy groom,
Her speech slurred and darkness loomed,
Her pulse quickened and her breath came in bursts short,
Her husband’s nails did pinch and hurt.

A year and a day passed away like a carnivorous nightmare
And Freia birthed a baby golden haired,
“Pretty child,” grunted the Water-Goblin, “Is it a boy?”
“No, it’s a girl,” spoke Freia with joy.

Freia enjoyed the happiness by and by tick,
But soon she became homesick,
She wished to see her Mother and to her show the baby,
In that watery Kingdom she was but a trophy.

“Please let me visit my mother?” she kept pleading.
“Never!” he kept repeating.
“Please?” Freia was all honey, clever and charming.
“Never ever!” he was no more laughing.

And so it went on, and on, each and every day,
The Water-Goblin did for an end pray,
“Wife go then,” he one day gave in and readily flipped,
“Back you must come!” he spat through rotted lips.  

“Go now,” he gestured with claws ******
And at the child in the crib he pointed,
“The baby tender and sweet will with me stay,
Come back or else she pays.”

Freia begged, “To my dear Mother I want to baby display.”
“Hark and hear!” he kicked the cot of clay,
“Listen to my dread law. The child here plays.
Return to me by dark of this day.”

He took her to the surface and released her from the spell
Which kept her prisoner in the river red,
She went away yet still she heard a warning burning in her ears,
“Be back before dark or else they be tears!”

When to the old cottage she arrived she wiped her tears,
Her Mother was sitting in the rocking chair,
In the very air floated cobwebs, dust and impending doom,
The room was cloaked in layers of grainy gloom.

Freia rushed to her Mother feeling sad and weak,
It had been a year since they last did speak,
Mother and daughter warmly hugged and held each other fast,
“O, my doll, you return at last from the past!”

Freia did to her Mother tell her tale from beginning to end,
She was broken and needed to mend,
To her Mother she told about her beautiful baby,
Outside, the light was fast fading.

“I must now go back to my darling child before dark
Or else my dread lord will bark
And wreck vengeance most sharp upon my precious pearl,
O, how I miss my darling girl!”

“But don’t you see?” began the wise Mother true,
“The Water-Goblin has no magic over you.
It is said that whosoever returns to dry land can the spell break
If they keep the Water-Goblin at bay till daybreak.”

“Will the vile Water-Goblin free me and my child sweet?
And will he shift this curse? O, do speak!”
“Yes! You and the baby will be safe,” the Mother explained,
“The Water-Goblin will crack and be in pain.”

“Now we wait for the night of shadows long,” said the Mother poor
As she bolted the door,
“Go and bar the kitchen windows, I begin to feel sick,
Lock also the house on this side, be quick!”

No sooner had they barred the door of the cottage old
When the wind howled down the valley cold,
Night shrouded the land and black things moved outside,
They heard the rain pelting the hillside.

The storm with titanic volcanic fury spoke,
Everything fled even hope,
The cottage door with demonic force did vibrate,
Something was tearing the cottage.

“Has he come for me?” Freia shook in her Mother’s arms,
“Has my Master come to inflict harm?”
“No!” shouted her Mother over the thunderclaps,
“It’s the storm perhaps.”

Scratching was heard and they began to fearfully pray,
The panel above the doorway shattered,
Sharp shards of glass everywhere cascaded and scattered,
“Come back!” the thing outside banged and battered.

“It’s the wind. Only the wind, darling dear,” the Mother cleared
Her frightened daughter’s eyes full of fear,
The noise and the angry threats of the unseen creature
Drove darts of icy terror into their features.

“When will this nightmare end?” asked Freia with concern.
Replied the Mother, “Dawn is about to be born.
This Water-Goblin has to go back to his Kingdom before sunrise
Or else he will lose his life and prize.”

Crash! Something broke, splinters of wood in the air flew,
Cracked claws clawed across morning dew,
A hairy paw with nails long and sharp shot through the opening
Above the door and for the lock began searching.

A heartrending howl of frustration then was heard,
Without warning the probing fist did disappear
And there was an unnatural silence in the morning land,
The Hour of the dead Wolf was at hand.

Bang! Something outside the door had horribly burst,
Something had been flung with frightful force
But the cottage door was strong and held firm and fast
The Mother dryly spoke, “The terror has passed.”

“Has it?” said Freia as she with caution went to unhook the lock,
The handle was cold and her heart still in shock,
Her brow and hands wet with the nightmare’s perspiration,
She paused before the door in desperation.

Something lay on the ground before the door all blood and bone,
The sight would bring tears even to a stone,
Freia saw what the Water-Goblin had used to batter the door with,
O, how she wished to stitch her eyelids!

For there lay the lifeless body of her baby on the earth,
This was the baby to whom she had given birth,
Only a small finger remained of the golden curled girl,
The Water-Goblin’s curse had done the worst.



©Rangzeb Hussain
I want you
                  to know that I forgot
the memory I wanted to expound upon here,
                  the tears I never cried make it difficult to dryly
blot the pages.
                  I suppose you know I never loved you, but
more meaningfully, I hope you now see how trifling and hollow
love is. Like a warm Spring day, love means nothing but the
nearing embrace of a dying star.
                   I want you to know what I'm referring to
in this line. It's called "astronomy." It seems to hold the
attention of other mystics, such as her.
                   But I want you
to know
                    that it's just about gravity and
luminosity and
                    what our star hasn't got, but
others have.
                    The wind blows my page as I'm writing this standing on
my porch, and I fail to
                    Look up. My hand holds down the dry, decaying
tree pulp in an attempt to stabilize the
                    metaphor for
Life
                    your absence has become.
When the dead leaves of last Fall rattle, I can see you there,
running past the chain-link fence containing me and the
tennis surface.
                     It would be weeks before sweat dripped from my nervous
head as we jumped up and down while others slow danced.
                     And then I wake up in my new apartment in a city
you've never been to and remember jumping was only me. It's been seven years, but
I still have my diploma from that early graduation--
it's above my fridge so I can ignore it every time I
reach inside
                      To drink the cool water and
remember the things I should have learned
and the time I ran fast, back
                       to your host parents' so I could use the bathroom
without you knowing, because my stomach was convulsing.
                        And maybe what I meant to say is that the earth's on
its yearly sojourn which brings me to that place-- that group of folding chairs
and the endless line of cows dancing slowly past the podium with nothing
but a piece of paper that tells them "you were once here."
                        It takes me on the highway, past my father's farms to that
man-made reservoir that irrigates them. It amuses Nebraskan farm boys
that the girls that ride along seem to know the way
                        better.
                        But you weren't from Nebraska, and you only knew the way
in water, in the bikini I helped you choose at target-- I don't remember the hue.
                         Your skin looked amazing and warm
                         transplanted, prairie-grass nestled gently on your supple thighs
under my grasping hands which held on firmly yet
were knocked off with the jolt as you spurred our gas-powered sea-horse, laughing
as we both sped off from our island rendezvous and
became oblivious of my self.
MMXII

I called this exchange student I knew in high school "Diva." It means goddess in Sanskrit,
so I thought I was being Multi-Kulti.

She left me with a lot of **** on my boots.
Joseph Valle Oct 2012
Have you ever noticed
that tail lights reflect
off tire-worn roads
when sun and all
have gone asleep?
A pair of red glow
just seems to float
through space
like a reverse halo
behind and below vehicle
on its 2am way elsewhere.
And how about the fact
that windshield wiper and turn signal
never truly-precisely-
exactly-rhythmically sync?
One clicks and blinks,
the other dryly whaps,
on that first swipe,
of course,
just when light mist
begins to stick
and the exit approaches
at a slick
sixty-five-miles-an-hour.
Turn down the volume now,
it's time to pay attention.

Candle wax doesn't always
melt directly inward.
Sometimes it does dome
perfectly,
which makes it
all the more fun
to push further.
Other times it just bows out,
as if to say,
"There'll be no addition
to the amount of light
I'll be giving you tonight.
You'll just have to bend me in
and pray for a split-less base,"
as hours, seeming like minutes,
in minutiae,
are spent burning our tobacco
and circling our teacups
and laughing effortlessly,
indenting pillows and rugs
and us keeping so, so quiet
as not to awaken ourselves.

Waxing is always
a chance worth risking
because, worst case,
we can inflame another dancer
while we chat
and hope that,
just this once,
God help us,
we realize
our stars align.
"How can two souls, with their own wells of stories and fears and delights and tears, so far from each other's presence and premises and thoughts, look exactly the same?"--SC.

It all began at the end of another day;
On an evening with faint footsteps—behind the shy sunset,
With an eyes that were craving for sweet sleep;
I closed my day with a heart too tired to weep.

With him still in my mind, and a melted heart back again,
I frequented the bus stop once more—
But too thought I had caught a ghost:
A ghost of him trapped within thee;
You with his charms, and within his body;
You with his gaze, and the smooth dark hair he has;
You with his chin, and the faint blushes to it;
You in his jacket, with a bag slung loosely over your shoulder.

Nikolaas, ah, you reminded me of him at that instant;
Nikolaas, that perhaps even He has left behind;
Nikolaas, that once entertained my young artist's heart;
Nikolaas, that wailed and pleaded funnily like a young infant;

Nikolaas, that often woke me with his childish cry;
Nikolaas, that failed to sew a long brown tapestry;
Nikolaas, that held my poetry book over the literary summer;
Nikolaas, with whom I spent too much time together.

Nikolaas, whose calls oft' distracted my lessons;
Nikolaas, who at whose mischief laughed very charmingly;
Nikolaas, who to my words listened willingly;
Nikolaas, who in his brown pyjamas startled me every day.

But you were too realistic to be deemed artistic, Gianluca;
You were even more hopeful than the tainted earth grounds;
You lent to me a bashful terrific smile;
You charmed me, though with his charm, for a long while;

You are but his soul told in another way;
This I knew when with a bold smile you nodded at me;
A smile that was more melodious than the purplish skies.
The skies just sneered at our florid scene;
With insatiable glances they boasted of their silk;
Spat thunder onto the shivering glass beneath our feet;
Before they swore and took a chance to run and fleet.
Fleet, fleet away, like an unconscious, insane rainbow,
As if there would not be another day.
As if the world would end as tomorrow ended,
As if no rain would dismay the earth by its cold colour.
Gianluca, I was as wet as clouds—over there, by the bus stop,
My soaked hair had made myself turn grey; pale, and—before you came,
I had become again disillusioned, once more.

How could two beings look exactly the same—that I understand not,
But you made me gasp as I caught you first in my sight.
Your eyes, that were more European than the crying night,
Your hair, that was funnier than the unmet moonlight,
And your aura, that was more serious than a dream.
Ah, Gianluca, how could you be as numerous as him!
Tell me now, your stories from Italy;
And the city of Rome you had ridden across;
Ah, but my sweet Nikolaas is from Amsterdam;
In which all years are pale with white snow and dust;
And a scattered whiteness—a shrieking pale gloss.
Gianluca, Gianluca, still—you are all but a filmed mirror of my Nikolaas,
My little prince, that once attained and tightened his grip of my ****** soil,
My dear husband, that once entertained me with the brass and grass of his toil.
My naughty love, that ran jumping about the following morning;
My very own darling, with his own explosive moods,
But no tears once appeared in his moonlit eyes.
Ah, Gianluca, how I could see none but my lost prince in thee!
Gianluca, my dear, but are you perhaps more sincere than him?
Remind me that reality is but not another horror like dreams,
For my days, ever since he left, hath been a nightmare,
A nightmare my heart has failed to tease, and burn dryly away,
A nightmare that has fallen onto the top of my every single cell.
Gianluca, and your red mouth was as bright as the red sunset;
Just like the lips of my darling back then—which started to smile as our eyes met.
Gianluca, Gianluca, but tell me now—shall I ever meet thee again?
My Nikolaas might still be alive—but his image is dead within me,
He has fallen for his evil night aurora; an Aurora that, sadly, is not like me, Estefannia.

Gianluca, dry is my throat, hungered is my tongue;
But you fired me against those like a poem;
Your shadow was to me like a little ghost—and perhaps is still,
Your sight made me fear, and my stomach churn ill—
While your hands were just a few turns away.
Perhaps you can assure me again, that you are not him;
You are new, with an unsinned soul—and untainted;
Tell me that you are pure—that you are whom I have sought;
Even though you are still him to my ****** dreams;
With a voice within which he used to say;
With a smile within which he lived my days;
Ah, in my mind now, there is but a jumbled forest of thoughts;
A whole well of unheard mirages—that I shall craft into dear, dear poetry;
Ah, but who knows everything except that He gives to know;
And who sees everything but that He makes our destiny;
Ah, Gianluca, perhaps I shall see you again amongst tonight's traffic;
When days but grow low, and dusk reclaims its fair relic;
When dawn is prepared—with the night maddening about at hand;
As I return from my errands—after attending to my books and friends.

Gianluca, Gianluca, Gianluca no matter how much you are like him;
Perhaps you are better at luring my souls;
And the treaties by which they feel satisfied not.
You are the fallen star—that I have hoped for;
You are the sanguine angel I have never met before;
Ah, and if this was the case, would you always be there for me?
And thus, my dear, but can this time—you see me by unlasting daylight?
Perhaps you look only more like him by the night;
And as dawn greets, and noon appears fast;
I think you shall claim your own image;
Confirming that to me, your charm shall always last.

Gianluca, Gianluca, Gianluca,
How I miss, miss, and miss him in my sordid dreams;
I've missed him far too terribly—and at times, unjustly;
He, the son of storm and the child of mystery;
He, the lad of madness—the angel of scrutiny;
And to this day still but I miss him, my dear Nikolaas,
The little, little darling naughtiest—yet most beloved to my heart.
But still, show me what you can say onto my poetry;
Show me what you can see, and what you may keep in mind;
Show me, perhaps, the threads of another love story;
Another gracious tale—with him I shall never find.
Anais Vionet Oct 14
I’m tired of influencers faking nervousness.
my generation wants to care less
these days.
it’s a counter-current hack.
we want to be less defined.
we can search and reflect for ourselves.
we’re sick of the emotion
that’s all over everyone’s faces,
the unsightly splotches of opinion.
the entire election machine,
the process of getting there, is smudged.
It’s a curated mess, an advising spin,
an incomprehensible hex:

“Oh profit pondering,
contradictory means to an end
- bless weave, and conceal,
bloodless dollar debt options,
painful penny pincher paradoxes,
and deadly debt bliss dilemmas..”

“Is this a witch or an arbitrager?” Lisa asked, after rudely leaning over and reading up to this point.
“I was shooting for a numinous type of beat,” I revealed.
“We’re supposed to be working on our thesis definitions,” she said accusingly.
“Are you not challenged, here, hour by hour?” I asked sarcastically.
“I need ideas - well - I have too many ideas, I need some focus, I wanted to see what you had.”
I deadpan looked at her, “Well, you broke the spell - I lost my train.” I complained dryly.
“Don’t put me in a situation.” she said, waving my gripe off as insignificant.
.
.
Songs for this:
Easier Said Than Done by Thee Sacred Souls
drive ME crazy! by Lil Yachty
Melt by Nilüfer Yany
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 10/10/24:
Numinous =things with a mysterious or spiritual quality.
K Mae Mar 2013
confident on timeworn routes
until unknown brings gasping fear*
what is this ?
my playground now to be reduced
to rutted paths of paltry use ?

enough !
power mine I have denied
creative pulses flattened
miming patterns drawn by others
spark of mine allowed to smother
shocked I recognize within
dryly spreading stubbornness
*the false vitality
of habit
mark john junor Oct 2014
her eyes invest in me the truths of her fragile heart
she wished to know happiness and freedom once more
she leaned gently against the window frame
her eloquent beauty whispered gently on my eyes
she gave me a soft sorrow by declining the offered flower
my words like autumn leaves gathered dryly at my feet of clay
my intents pure of heart stumbled weakly
as i tried to explain
that a breathtaking glimpse of her had found me
she was standing subtle and alluring in sunshines vivid light
highlights in her hair a golden hue like a regal crown
lost in the imagery of her smiling moment
lost in her radiated gentleness
that engulfs like silent fierce seduction of your heart's better natures
you only think of heartfelt wish to see her joy
you breath and live to see her smile
you will love her presence like summery sunshine's kiss
you will adore her silken voice like moonlight dance upon water
the offered plastic flower but a token of adoration
a bauble cast with noble intent
for a fine young goddess
(for morning book kara... :-) a really nice girl and nice friend)
Lyn-Purcell Sep 2018
EᔕᔕᕼI ᑕOᑎT.
~ ⚪♫⚪ ~
"I guess you're right," Lyn sighs.
"Though, I will take this up with
the guards. Seeing how it was very
easy for us to sneak out."
'I wonder if they will even notice
that their Queen is missing...'
Lyn
chuckles dryly, her hands on her
hips.

~ ⚪♫⚪ ~
"Try not to be too ******* them,
My Lady." Ainhara chuckles
while walking to them, an old
wicker basket with lids hanging
from her slender arm.
The wind blows and her dark
green skirt ***** in the winds
around her legs, as did Esshi's
and Lyn's.

~ ⚪♫⚪ ~
She is gently rummaging through it.
"The coins should be enough for
all three of us. Now, are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be." Lyn says as she pulls
up her face veil, and her ladies do
the same. The day is bright and hot,
but the opaque veils are light.

~ ⚪♫⚪ ~
Ainhara leads the way, walking
through the forests, Esshi and Lyn
behind her. Out of the forests,
they follow the path down into
the ever bright, bustling, colourful
Aurelinaean town.
Warren Gossett Sep 2011
Down from the icy Sawtooth crags
and through the winter-laden landscape,
the wind eventually dips to the canyon
and creek we loved so well as children.
Continuing on, it threads through the
hollows above the creek, sculpted even
today by stooped cottonwood trees.

Twisting above granite outcroppings
and lava boulders, the wind courses
through the giant arteries of this canyon,
passing among quaking aspen, river willow,
and gnarled cottonwood, shorn rudely
by now of every dryly-veined leaf.

At ancient volcanic escarpments the
wind bears south, scraping hard along
canyon walls. Upward it moves, out of
the canyon, slowing and sallying about
the hillocks, the gullies, the poplars
until it finally comes to stir ever more
gently, warmer even, my dear brother,
around your gray marbled headstone.

Primeval of days, this very same wind
blows for eternity upon eternity, polishing
and purifying even the roughest of
the earth's elements and impediments.
This said, at this hill's crest where you rest,
there is no need of further refinement. Feel
how the northern wind quiets for you,
as if it knows over whose stone it passes.

--
neth jones Feb 2022
contaminated...                            

the boy is explained in the dark
                  made smaller and tighter than his thirteen years
        invented a-tread each direful night ;
            in place of restfulness
                   he is tussled :

itchy within                                    
moans of a growth owning pain
domestic air is newly surrogate
the boy flees upstairs
the condition of the home is sickly
             excreted beads from the fibres
a pale mix is gland
                        a perspiration out of sorts
pursed
spritzed
lively          
            then a wing-ed light smog

keeping to his room                            
he sits on his bed to 'wait it out'
the sun downs                        
as fruited ideas                
                   treacle up the pine wood walls
as otherworld tones        
                             flute the flumes that plumb the walls
as his mother clears the dishes
        with the radio on
as the fathers increasing tardiness
        makes the wound hour leaden further

outside
wind starts churning up the monster
hustling the coniferous trees
stoking the forrest for its brazen voice
jeeving hard upon the house
dry *******
inducing a perverse osmosis
within                                              
          pressurized audibility is clayed
hairs on the carpet tick static
              ....  this negative duress

outside
the moon hides its legend            
an autumn owl takes the bough
     just above the boys window
    it hunches into its ruffle
       retches up a pellet of prey
fur and crushed bone
            clatters dryly into the gutter

the boy works his jaw
       relieving his popping ears
the rooms climate becomes sparky
important items radiate auras :
             the scorpion in formaldehyde
stolen from school
                          grandmas mourning ring on a string
                suspended above his desk
        an old key discovered in  the woods

investigation                          
a brief hole in sound
a slim bik of light traverses
  over the boy
    the bed
       and out into the hallway
it winks gone
     and sips of smoke
like lithe neat scraps of silk
start livening the corners of vision

he stands                                                      
open­s his closest and dresses for sleep
      yield to routine

Mother enters                              
    always a human breath                  
                                         of pre decay warmth
      here to make him into his bed
bound by her neat practiced tucks
                         the boy receives her loving words
                                  but she's in a separated world from his
distortion gums up the audibility          
he attends to lips
the blessings don't function right
mistress smudges are left in the air            
they trail from the corners of her mouth
                             with the expressive turns of her head

fending lightly from the room
she blows a kiss at the doorway
it punches a little galaxy swirl
                              and suspends
a heated blue weave of the hand
                    and she is gone

door concluded and the light left on
the wall flower patterns crick and shale loose
    they cash into the flooring
and in turn the floorboards palpitate finely
feathering into a unreliable state

less than a minute later ...                   
fathers presence                              
   makes an apologetic attempt
                                                     at a ghost-walk
sounds clumbered in an aquarium                
    he slides his back down the drunken partition
and talks
   he sells a story of personal wretchedness
some lesson is vague
flammability
the boy takes the readings                  
                  of the distant vocal squall
pauses in the erratic speech weather expect replies  
     but the boy fears this colonized version of the father

though anger
                        father does not enter
rumbles his fists, feet              
                 and frustration at the wall
stands                                            
      and­ punches his footfalls
                  to the master bedroom

the parents
together now closeted
amniotic             
their world fidgets fiercely and swells          
swaddled in their own dramatics
firing blindly                        
their voices
travel the pipes in the walls
back to the boys room
                drowned of discourse
but not the aggressive 'passion' flaring out
they plunder the boys ears

Sudden ! ;                
                  brakked smell of flint
a bird slams the window dead        
crack in the pressure
unbearable penetrating release
screaming the boy host violent
minds that bind are loosened
subpoenaed                                              ­
          the boy recoils and fends this raid
kicks off the bedding
strips free of his pyjamas
a thick layer of his own goes with it
fleecing his actual skin                        
raw stinging exposure
he tugs at the flay of his own rubbery peel
enough layers of dermis in one
grip and pull
to make real hurt
raw of pain
(it feels)
tug-tug
grip
and pull
sleeves off of limbs
and a sappy caul from his bonce
he doffs the leather onto the floor
fresh wash of song
fierce waves of signals hot and cool
he ***** up his matty sheered hide
"**** it !"
pulls up the window enough
vent
an outward 'gush' as the pressure balances
the boy                        
dispose    
      push the viscid pelt out
the boy expels
disgorged into the night

                                              - consummated
Brianna Duffin Jan 2019
I still search for you in the boys
I mistake for bandages,
The delicate deer I mistake for lions,
The ones with eyes almost the same shade of you,
With hair just like you lips resounding your laughter,
Resembling a wisp of your smile, but they aren't you.
I don’t think about them the way I think about you
And they don’t look at me the way you looked at me.
Look at me like a piece of dead meat for the chomping.
Sometimes I pretend you're dead,
Fantacise about all the deaths you could die
Because it's so much less painful
Than the alternative you left me with.
You left me to deal with all that’s happened.
My mom laid the blame at your feet
for everything that happened that awful year.
She was on the outside the whole time-
What a luxury, don’t you think?
A luxury like melancholy poetry.
Did you know I love Sylvia Plath?
Especially that really smart poem
Where she talks about expectations
And disappointments. Disappointing.
You'll never know that even now I think
Most of us are so selfish, we can’t help but
Always, eventually, go down Plath’s path.
Even you. Eventually you. Especially you.
Every version of you except the one I know.
I don't know if you still think of me
But, boy, I sure hope you do
Because God knows I remember you--
You’re insist on dominating everywhere I go
And you turn everything your shade of blue.
That blue haunts me in everything, everyone.
It's useless, no matter how much I try to forget.
No matter how much I just want to forget.
And the pieces of me so desperately want to forget you.
But how could I forget you?
When forgetting means forsaking
And I’m not sure it’ll be you that’s forsaken
Because erasing you might mean
Accidentally actually erasing me.
Because the worst part is I lost where we stop and end.
I was so afraid of you that I gave everything
Trying to make you happy, to satisfy that appetite for blood,
Hoping in response you wouldn’t hurt me so badly
But you burned the empty pieces of my soul
And you desecrated the ashes.
Did you forget me when the room went dark?
Because that’s when I think of you the most.
Because when I go blind is when I see it all
When I can’t see a thing through my tears is when I hear you
I can see you sitting there while I bathe in my tears
Your Cheshire grin and sick laugh bordering my thoughts…  
While I grimaced and wondered if I had yet died
Your deadly force overpowered all of my NOs like a joke,
Your army all prepped and primed and ready for the show
You made yourself the atom bomb, renamed me Hiroshima
So even now I'm up all night, licking wounds, crying myself to sleep
The will in my days no longer mine to have or to hold these nights-
I wake up in the middle of the night, you know,
Gasping for air and I can never seem to breathe.
The sound of your voice, the sound of your grunt,
The smell of your sweat, the smell of your hair,
The look in your eyes, the look of your mouth
They say time is this grand solution, but I haven’t been solved.
But this is not the way to heal, not the way to be whole,
Not the way to get revenge, not the way to get justice.  
Because something horrific happened and ignoring it can’t lessen the imprint
Because lo and behold, after all this, I’m still stuck here knowing how sickly
Your friends enjoyed the show, in fear. So stupid I can’t get it out of my head.
I wish I wasn’t, how you say, “just a stupid girl”,
Wish I wasn’t a ball your grins could toss back and forth
Until it comes time to- Stop, drop, and move on
I should have shut up, listened to the song of my dying heart
You all wanted to play and you all wanted to touch
But you don’t get to use me as stomping grounds
Even though you seemed to think NO wasn’t enough
Another moment closed are my sunken eyes
As the tears gracefully crawl down my face
My body is a deflated puddle of numbness
All it knows is the inkblot of mascara tears
On my skin- and surprise, what do you know-
It’s just enough to paint a dancing mask over
The scratch running dryly down my chest,
And- oh look- it complements the purple
Of the scattered map drawn through bruises
And to top it off, red paint decorates the scene
With a knot full of knots, I fantasize about
Swallowing just enough pills
To make my pain as numb as my (everything else).
I lost my mind as I lost that war over and over
You desecrated and disintegrated the fibers of my soul
Over and over as you forced your poisons deeper inside
The world slowly went dark from the fighting and pain
And still, I scream like the wind and cry like the rain.
Roots all are but in earth fixed
Blind,groping,for succor hungry
Aimless,embraced soiled,underground.
No longer hunger do I for mine now
History its to be rooted,death untimely,
Being rotten,eaten dryly weak,rejected
Let me be that airy tree fairy,breathing green
Spreading wings,feeding airs joyous,free,
Or a carcass dead,by mothers all deserted,
By nature connected, still life and beautiful!
neth jones Sep 2021
11
the air is cooler      
      less kenetic and soupy              
           less aggressive with the mammal scent
safer (it seems) clean

        the skin retracts a little
dryly
                     less welcoming to dirt contact
                           my feet shift cooly in my sandals

the world awaits
             new temperament
03/09/21
Anais Vionet Mar 2022
Yesterday’s weather was squallish, so Mich and Lisa were posted-up all day. They’ve been hanging together lately but tolerhate each other - I don’t get it.

Mitch, a Junior, is the snippiest man I’ve ever met - except for my brother, when he’s actively trying to be a ****. Everything Lisa does seems to rub him wrong, but he’s got a massive ***** in her direction.

Sometimes Lisa lets him intersperse his harsh music and we get “Neural Milk Hotel” or “Bikini ****” - screemo tracs that set me pinching fingers close together THIS close to unplugging the **** router. I don’t think he’s a comfortable fit.

So, the three of us were going to pick up dinner at “Charley’s Place” and bring it back for the room. We get about ten feet out in the rain and Lisa says, “Argh! My Phone,” holds up the “1-second” sign and turns back.

Mich, with the rain lashing down, is clearly irritated. He turns to me, looks me up and down and says, “Should we sleep together and see what it’s like?”

I decided that either his irritation with Lisa was emboldening him - or more likely, he was making a joke. “Wow, you’re really smooth with the seduction thing,” I say, hoping he takes the joke path.

“I’m being direct,” he says, bending his legs or something to look me more directly in the eyes. “I like you, I’m attracted to you.” I looked away. Then turn back.

“It’s wrong. The whole idea. Deeply wrong,” I say, deciding that he’s serious and starting to get mad, “Lisa’s my friend,” I say, wondering how I can tell her about this, “die for that.”

“We know each other - it wouldn’t be like sleeping with a stranger,” He says, trying a logic so odd I almost laugh.

“Collapse already,” I say, dryly, as the dorm door opens and Lisa emerges.

I put Lisa between us. “You know,” I say, sweeping my hair back from my forehead but keeping my palm pressed there like I’m taking my temperature, “I think I’ll call it a night.”

“Awww,” Lisa says, grimacing disappointedly. “Really?” Tilting her head in concentration as she searches me for reasons, symptoms, or a change in heart.

“Yeah,” I say, giving her a hug, “see ya later.” I turn and go in, as they walk off arguing.

I decided to work on an essay I’d been putting off, but my heart wasn’t in it - I couldn’t concentrate. Everything was irritating me - my clothes felt like wool - thinking I was going to have to tell Lisa about Mitch’s proposition.

Forty minutes later Lisa’s back home - with sandwiches for both of us. I’m sitting on my bed playing Animal Crossing when she scooches onto the foot of my bed and tells me she decided the Mitch thing wasn’t working anymore.

“Thank God,” I say, letting my head fall back on my pillows, “You couldn’t trust him.”
BLT word of the day challenge: Intersperse: place or insert something at intervals"

Slang: post-up = staying inside   tolerhate = hate but tolerate

There’s a song for this: All I’ve ever known by Bahamas
Hadrian Veska Jul 2021
All things have passed
Or perhaps they will
I can no longer recall
Passing through the void as I did

I know not where I arrived
Or if I am anywhere at all
I have forgotten most things
If I ever knew much to begin with

I do remember a string of words
An inseparable feeling attached to them
"I will never forget you"
Though who said it eludes me

That feeling has not left me
Though the moment has been lost
I must continue on through this void
Wherever it may take me

I cannot betray this memory
That last bright star in my mind
Amid a sea of ink black darkness
For it is all that remains

As I traverse this void
Here beyond all space
I whisper dryly
I will never forget you
Though, I do not know your name

For I know that you remember me
shwiwi Apr 2021
It wasn't like in the movie
Time didn't stop
No music played
when you walked into to my life
I wasn't blinking
for a split second can't be missed

I had a hard time deciding
where I sit
when I sit with you
cuz I wanted to watch you eat
and I wanted you beside me at the same time

My sister said "yes, your heart skipped a beat
but it isn't a heart desease,
cuz boy, you are in a much bigger trouble"
And I didn't get what she said
No one told me what's it like being in love

But I sat in the middle of the night,
writing poems about you
I was listening to songs
every single one dedicating to you
and every pretty thing I saw
reminded me of you

I never missed to smell your hair
I would kiss your hand at every chance
Every joke was to make you smile

Now I see you in the smoke I blew outside the window
Years ago, if someone told me about this
I would mock at them,
saying "move on, don't make it big a deal"
Now it is two years later,
my hands on the letters,
pressing one by one as I'm thinking of you
and one by one, the moments reappear
I still feel you all over me, touch by touch
but we've walked away from each other, step by step
I have to admit that tonight I moved one inch back to you
and I think I've been doing this inch by inch
but when I look around,
I'm in the same place as the last time I checked
when I thought I walked away


I might've chuckled dryly at the irony
I was right where I left you,


Right where I left you.
Sheneka Dec 2017
“You’re eating, again?”
The question stings like a honeybee’s kiss
I smile dryly as I nibble at my plate
You have moved on now
But I don't hear you
“You’re eating, again?”
These words intricately constructs heavy vines
encircling the delicate hand that once held my fork
I smile harder as three words prickles my body
Fabricating a paralyzing smog in my skull
The food becomes unpalatable and my mouth parches
“You’re eating, again?”
I rise and then I watch
"You’re eating, again?”
get flushed in a porcelain bowl
And I feel the familiar swell behind my eyes
And I weep
I weep because I ate again
Raven Sep 2015
the sadness came and it didn't look like you or the words that erupted like volcanoes from your vocal chords. It looked like me with my eyes wide watching every mistake I've ever made in the mirror on my bathroom wall. It looked like every last drop of alcohol that comforts my throat at 10 in the morning. My knees bleed and I make sure I don't remember falling.

My only escape are these words but I always want to pull my eyelids over my body like my bedsheets every time I write them. I've always blamed myself for my parents silence. If my father couldn't love my mother, how could anyone ever love me? I'm ashamed of comparing that closet door to my body. And how it still comes mind every time I try to slam it shut into the depths of my mental crawl space.

I feel like the blood rushing through my veins is turning to rust and no matter how hard I try my mind refuses to rest. It runs like the second hand on a wall clock and stress crawls up my spine weaving spider webs in and out of my vertebrae. No matter how hard I try to sweep them under the beds of my finger nails like an old couch and forget, they always seem to find their way back.

I 'd crack my ribs to pull you out from where you reside inside me but I've never been strong enough.
I'd ***** up all my organs but that wouldn't make me any thinner.
My body is nothing but a hive made of bones harboring swarms of pointless thoughts and I'd do anything to exterminate them. But that's not my line of work.

The loneliness pours in waves and I can never breathe while dryly drowning. The cigarettes don't help either but when you're scratching your skin to stop thinking, they give your hands something to do. I'm losing the small grip on reality that I'm still holding onto by a pinky and thumb.
and If my walls could speak, they'd say "I'm sorry". So I'll continue to break my fingers praying I'd die in my sleep and lose myself in these bedsheets.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2021
a thousand years ago, wrote a poem called
“why I always carry tissues”  -
a labor of love to
mine own toddlers misadventures,
requiring love covered in tissues so soft,
yet an ironclad coating
of natural substantive parenting
useful for tearing eyes, running noses,
and the cuts of living outdoors joyously

children grow older and oft that means,
they seek not your counsel,
and if offered, politely ignored,
for so it goes tween fathers and sons

then one summer days you receive an
observation, a datapoint that irradiates,
a quiet confirmation that not everything
you’ve said and done has gone astray

a young’un of “almost ten,” informs her father,
around the luncheon table of three generations,
that her foot is hurting; the son, now the father,
diagnosis renders, a blister, which will require
a protective custody that will protect the child’s
feet from the ravages of furious Shell Beach fun,
or the rough of a Manhattan sidewalk

I watch with a joy so quiet and so overwhelming,
as the son-father reaches into a cargo pocket,
producing not one but two bandaids, for life
requires backups for there are other babes about,
who at moments notice, produce scrapes and cuts
of ever greater consequence for each year they age

his wife renders me overjoyed, when she dryly
observe how certain children are lucky that
their father always carries bandaids, a new factoid,
for me, an unknown that glistens like a wet shell

now my eyes tearing, for a message in a bandaid,
or a tissue no matter which, is a certified proof,
somehow a message got through the clutter,
marked “well received,” that loving well requires
an oh so very hard attention to details, and that deep pockets
are repositories of good notions, handed down generations

June 24, 2021

Shell Beach
Claire Waters Dec 2015
1
"New Latin, from Greek boulimia great hunger, from bou-, augmentative prefix (from bous head of cattle) + limoshunger

First Known Use: 14th century”

when i first got to california i would study the way ocean waves crashed upon the shores of beaches, it’s was bone crushing, pulp softening kind of tides. packs of tides keep rushing to the beach and throwing themselves down into it’s stand, as the beach absorbs each one.
it does not recoil.
i want to learn the earth’s secrets
i am attracted to water, tides of brevity, yet unrelenting to the sand
and the shells and sand they make regenerate, breaking down continuously
then hardening and heaving their particles back to the ocean
trusting it will be brought to some shore
the waves of the pacific quiet the waves inside my skull.

a constant pounding, a wave of bulls crashing through
uncharted territories even now.

i am coauthor of too many mistold memoirs
someone else wrote about me from afar.

2
it’s funny, no, i shouldn’t say that
it’s strange, how quickly one becomes commodity
how the pall of your skin has a scent
but your eyes are lassos
how, without your consent, your body can be bent
cut, *******, and transformed into an unanswerable question
drawing whole packs to your lone presence
dryly plucking the last drops of milk from a straw
you look up as they circle, giggling
and hunker into their places, surrounding

they’re the classic eclecticism of boys looking for fast entertainment
sure, let me be your dancing bull, wave the red cloth and dare me
because i am not the bull and i won’t let you have this one.
mr big ****, his homie in your face laughing at you
shy guy, and sarcastic dude who’s ******* bored
they say you don’t look like you grew up here
you think, “what, in this in-n-out?”
you say, “no, i’m from the east coast.”
whenever these things happen,
your words become bitten off at the ends

you hold onto your empty cup a bit too long as serious mr big **** talks at you
your head swimming with frustration and mistrust
homie who laughs jabs his finger into your face
pointing to the special sauce leaking from your burger
"aren’t you gonna eat that?"
you smile at him and you don’t know why but you just smile
you take a bite and chew with your mouth open
you haven’t got an appetite

you begin to cajole and retort casually with them,
seeing how long the game will last before it gets dumb
as if your harassers are friends
until the words “*******” enter your periphery
and in a fit of disgust you stuff the last bite down
and exit the pathetic scene
as you walk out to ringing laughter you find yourself
un-panicked but fatigued by the run in
thinking, when will i learn how to handle this ****?
and why should i have to learn to regularly handle harassment?
i never asked for this attention
never asked.

my body is not a question.


3
a slow burn of metaphors accompanies every bout of insanity
this week i’m convinced that i’m drowning from the inside out
when he comes over it’s hard to look at him, with his sweet eyes and adoration
after rushing around picking up the little pieces of myself off the carpet
hissing in disgust “stupid *****, stupid ******* ****”
and putting it all back together before he got here
because i feel less than nothing
far from beautiful

4
i would often imagine what people would do
after i died, if it would be
a mess of bad jokes about entitled white girls
with selfish insecurities
or a mess of bad sentiments about how i was a modest hard working girl who
who
who am i most days, except for someone
who ******* tried her hardest
i don’t like the idea of dying young, giving other people
control of how i’m remembered
i want to establish that image for myself
what a dream, what a dream.

who should get my trinkets, my instruments,
who got the glass collection, the tea cupboard
the patterned hats, the quartz stones and golden tooth
i thought about how the funeral would go
how my mother would cope
if my father could stand it
i have been making sand castles
and cooking messy cakes with frosting dripping jimmies
i have been reading books and
writing essays and working every run of the mill job
to keep my mother from crying
and my father from falling asleep in the stillness at night
regretting his regrets because i fall asleep in the stillness at night
regretting myself and thinking of him
regretting his regrets as his life stands behind him
and he drifts into a dream land where we do not exist but clouds

and i wonder, now, if i could still let this happen
if i could stand it, how much time i have to turn it around
i have been told you must invest
twice the time it took to dig the hole
in order to get out
if i start now, i can see the light by the time i’m roughly
37

i give my untouched binge food to homeless people
because watching them receive it
feels a lot more satisfying than the pain of eating it
fighting the weight of nausea
i hold back and return my wallet to my purse
as i whip around the burger king drive thru
and opt for dollar store cheese crackers in their little 16 cent per meal packages instead
that is to say, the package is the meal
i cannot fill my stomach these days,
with frozen organs and weeping ulcers
sweating and puking on the side of the road
i cannot sweat and puke on the side of the road these days
because i do not want to die, and must get better by 37
and these days, thesedays i have nightmares of men
with wild eyes and yellow teeth, bodying the window of my car
their hands groping for my face through the cracked window
pressing a gaping maw spittled against the glass
as i scream the deep scream of terror that comes from inside one’s stomach
when no one can hear or when a wild animal
is slaughtered by a larger feral creature, death drifting through the forest
home owners turning away with cold pressed spines
and wonder what died

i hear them talking about me from the hallway
more often than i speak of it myself
my bones crack, my muscles moan
i have no time left for sleep
the waves keep crashing down
i spend 12 hours in a day worrying about others
and try to take another 12 for myself but never quite
end up having that many
i wonder if you still think after hearing this poem
that this is a selfish insecurity
it is blurry childhood,
stab wounds from a series of sadness,
an insatiable wish to fill
the spaces of unmet need with small animals like me
wrapped up in unassuming parcels
forgotten under a christmas trees
eaten by maggots.

5
dear body,

they tell me we could have a heart attack
but i laugh at them
ask if i think I’m invincible and i laugh at them
i am far from it, because if i am anything i am a sponge
which doesn’t cause me to feel any less
just soak up the mess when there’s a spill
and continue to expand, adjust to the pressure, and then expand again
invincible is a generous word to use
for what i think i am
because i am weak, helpless, but angry

like a feral child biting doctors and snarling
or a person who lifts a car off an infant when the body gives you no choice
but to respond to the adrenaline of fear
pass the boundaries of what you believed to be true to save a life

i am simply adaptable, good at surviving
i have trained my body to be strong even when I am weak
my mind to stay sharp when my teeth have eroded
because the doctor doesn’t love you, and your mother
she’s sort of lying. like the government or dr jekyll.
you know not to trust people with empty eyes or bitter hearts
you will fight if it gets you out of this cell and closer to sunlight.
endurance is the only pride i cling to.

6
he picks up the book my mother was reading
"what’s this?" he skims the page looks at the block lettered heading "SUFFERING"
"suffering…" he looks up for a second,
then at me, and i wonder
if he knows, so i smile at him

when I was younger I didn’t get it
but now I fully understand how people
can keep secrets from their husbands and wives for years
some **** is too deep to allow
those you love
to wade in it

7
she swallowed me whole and after
clawing my way out of her stomach
I am still picking my fingernails
out of her teeth

8
i am paying for my grubby child hands
the baby bird bones in the backyard
of my childhood home
are singing warning bells to me from across a continent
they pierce my dreams when i finally sleep
the corn acres cresting golden hills in the dawn are gone
another night alone in a city far way from home
and my wings are still just feather and bone
muscle dead below, still holding the hilltops on her shoulders

you fall to the waves crashing down or
you pump the sore tendons of your weak wings
and you fly
there’s no other choice
your body is not a question
it is an answer
-
Anais Vionet Aug 2023
She’d been depressed at seeing how her parents had aged in just a couple of years. She hadn’t really contemplated time much before, it had seemed an endless resource.

Seeing her lying listlessly in bed, he asked “Are you ok?”
“I’m getting old,” she admitted, closing her eyes to conserve energy.
“You’re turning 20,” he stated dryly, somewhere in the darkness.
“Still,” she said, “You should know that I’ll start wrinkling, any day now, like a deflating balloon.”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that.” He said. She opened her eyes and looked at him soberly.

“You’re almost 27, are you getting crows feet?” He flinched away from her outstretching hand.
“No,” He responded confidently, but he checked his reflection in her dorm room mirror.
“Soon, your libido will flag,” she informed him solemnly, taking his hand for comfort.
He slipped off the bed and gently closed the bedroom door with a casual swipe of his hand.
“You should start eating fiber,” she gasped, “and retirement planning!”

“I’ve got a few good months left..” he said, as he came back to the bed and started unbuttoning the top of her yellow dress, “I might need someone, in the medical field, to keep an eye on me.”
“I could do that,” she smiled, as his button work progressed, “I do need more clinical hours.”
Anais Vionet Oct 2022
It was one of those gray but somehow bright-skied New England Wednesday mornings that made you sad for anyone who wasn’t there. Fall freshness demanded my attention, like a hungry pet, from every open lattice-window in our stuffy common room.

As I watched, for a marvelous moment, the world was a cartoon whirly-gig. Trees, writhed, animal-like, to be free of their multicolor leaves, shedding them - like bad blind-dates. The four-color debris was immediately drafted away on gust-streams, those invisible elves, and politely scattered in corners.

I’m waiting for test results today and time seems to be passing with vegetable slowness. In uncertain hours like these, some students armor themselves with alcohol while others indulge in religious solace. Not Leong and I. Leong’s a communist - it seems that communists grumpily tough things out.

I was raised a Catholic, so I rightly deserve whatever bad thing’s going to happen. In Catholicism, failure and guilt are accepted everywhere, like the best credit cards. Any success is automatically categorized as unexpected, undeserved, if not fraudulent, and above all, temporary. In fact, life itself is little more than an inconvenient test on the way to wherever.

“We’re living in the age of crisis.” I announced, agitatedly, to the otherwise quiet common room (where the usual crowd was attempting to study).
“Figured that out all by yourself”? Sunny asked, “You ought to go to Yale,” she added.
“Hear me out,” I say, as if anyone cares enough to stop me. “Our parents had their war on terror” I say, with air-quotes, “but we got a pandemic, a crazy President complete with insurrection, a faltering supply chain, a cost-of-living crisis, renewed nuclear war threats and the climate meltdown. It’s hard to study with all that going on.” I self-declared.

“It’s hard to study because I’m out of watermelon.” Sophie said, digging through the fridge.
“You aren’t anyone these days unless you’re battling a crisis.” Sophie noted.
“Your parents are ALIVE,” Leong said dryly, “I MET them and they’re going through all that too.”
“And are we (mankind) going to take any real, adult steps to address these issues?" I asked, looking around to see if my outrage was mirrored, “apparently not.” I sermonized rhetorically.

“YOU” Lisa said, shaking her head, “are a hopeless optimist - you left out a few crises.”
“WhatEVER,” I declared, “It’s still hard to study,” I reiterated, while distractedly chewing on a #2 pencil that Lisa had loaned me.

Later, we’re outside, taking in the semi-sun and reclining on our fold-up “better beach” lounge chairs. We’re off-and-on playing “That’s why I am like I am.”
“When I was in 10th grade, I had 22 detentions.” Sunny revealed.
“22! What for?” Anna asked, looking over at Sunny while shading her eyes from the sun that briefly pierced the clouds and decided to stab her fiercely in the face.
“Talking in class.” Sunny admitted. “Wow, THAT’S a shocker.” Lisa laughed.
“Shut up!” Sunny laughed, adding a ******* for emphasis. “I got those detentions on purpose. I had the love-jones for my English teacher, and she supervised lunch detentions.
I would bring in these lesbian paperbacks, like “Keeping YOU a secret,” to hold up and pretend read - while eying her, seductively."
Anna gasped, “Did she ever respond?”
“No,” Sunny said with a sigh, “My love was unrequited.”
“That was a lot of trouble to go through.” Lisa commented.
“Being gay isn’t that deep,” Sunny observed, adding the tag, “That’s why I am like I am.”
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Writhe: “to twist” usually in pleasure or pain.
Barton D Smock May 2013
calls me by cupping his hands and hollering.  is convinced he needs delayed attention.  senses my immediacy and waves me off.  his hands go into remission.  his hair darkens.  darkens as grass dryly chosen by a nearby frisbee.  we are here to celebrate.  three years without driving.  three years backing over a bicycle his daughter could not abandon.  bookmarks and powder.  brain a busy insect.  seasons placed on torpor’s waiting list.  the recent wars have been a clarity.  people want what we have.
Anais Vionet Jun 2022
We had breakfast on the Champs-Élysées this morning at Café Joyeux. Their croquet monsieur (a breakfast sandwich) was to die for - one bite can cure a hangover. They also serve a deep, rich Yirgacheffee coffee (€15 a cup) that I think God stirs with his little pinkie finger - it’s THAT good. We took up most of the little outdoor, oval tables on the right side (there are 10 of us) and our little sorority was noisy with chatter - earning us looks.

Our European vacation culminates today. We’re flying back to Georgia in a couple of hours. June seemed to drain away like water.  

The minion my Grandmère charged with coordinating our vacation, François, breakfasted with us. He’s one of the flock of Sorbonne Université MBAs she recruits each year to infuse new energy into her conglomerates.

He briefed us on our departure and flight. His imposition of definitive order and advance planning allowed us a casual and carefree sense of travel this summer. In an ideal world, he’d coordinate my entire life.

He’s been on-call all month but joined us, off and on - like when we arrived in Doublin, at customs, to smoothly guide us through and again, similarly, in Paris.

He’s 26, very handsome and model looking. He’s perfectly tailored, with an elegant yet minimalist style. He wears dark shirts of admiral and yale blue with long black jackets and gray slacks with no tie. His hair is a hipster straight, blonde fringe.

He’s so perfect that I wouldn’t put it past my Grandmère to have placed him in front of me, like bait, to see if something with us sparked-off.

He’s Frenchly brisk and yet dryly solicitous - as if I have the power to sanction his position, which, in a way I suppose I do.

“How’s François doing?” Grandmère would ask, each time we talked.

“He’s wonderful,” I said, “I think he’s a keeper.”

“Good, good for him.” she would reply - making the comment sound almost sly.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Culminate: "to reach the end or final result.”
Cassandra Allen Nov 2015
Your sitting and someone pops you a question.
Your sitting in a room where everyone avoids the eyes.
Not the eyes of one person,
But the eyes of everyone around them.
There here to help were all here to get help.
I came here to get help.
Someone pops you a question.
The brave one.
Hey, I've seen you at school.
Why,are you here?
All is dryly silent,
Has it always been this silent?
Why.....are you here?
Hyper and curious they sound despite the environment already answering.
I had an accident,
I am being helped.
It's quiet again.
Has it always been this silent?
Are you sure or is that what they've told you.
No,
I can feel the difference.
The doctor will see you now........
JG Reposh Sep 2010
notes,
when we walk easily and lowly
on an avenue, with a camera, with two hearts
we see and we have seen it
    we breaststroke through a night so
    dark and slovenly as to turn a sunrise purple
    to red, ashamed

books,
when we love properly
when we speak slowly to better hear
the dripping of a warm and raining noon
    there was nowhere left to go for us
    coolly dryly, bookish we sat
    and to a boyish morning, hurtled

will we sit again, as we walk
will we again open those books and laugh
Madeleine Toerne Mar 2015
A twig falls
into an oblivious backpack
and leaves a tic.

A package of cigarettes flies out the window of
a five-story building and smacks on the sidewalk,
like spit on some skin.

A scenario:
young, misbehaving child cools off in
a peaceful space, a bean-bag chair.
A premonition.
He’s twenty and wondering, where’s the bean bag now?

Two days of dryly coughing,
so much glowering,
he’s biking in the wrong direction.

“You’re idealistic,” he says to nobody.
He looks out the window, unsatisfied.
He eats a 3-bean salad, unsatisfied.
He adds bacon but it doesn’t matter
because I think he would rather die.
Dave Hardin Sep 2016
Medical History

I believe it was Churchill who said
History is written by the victors
delivered, one imagines, dryly with

a dash of pith, an ounce or two of gin,
words clipped and formed in the space above
his derbied chalk hill dome from gathering

clouds of ominous blue cigar smoke,
veddy proper, tickety-boo and all
that rot.  A life insurance policy

after all, read in a British accent
is boilerplate made sublime, all this
as I sit in the waiting room checking

off rows of little boxes, writing
my medical history, to be read
aloud in the event of my demise

by Englishmen; Bill Nighy on
the subject of my LDL levels,
Patrick Stewart breathing life into a

family penchant for colon cancer or
Gary Oldham giving a dignified
reading from the list of male fore-bearers

who’ve toppled headlong over the pale
clutching their chests.  Perhaps Steve Coogan
or some surviving Python could coax a

chuckle at the expense of my total
hip replacement, snatching victory from
the jaws of inevitable defeat.
Culpoetry Feb 2014
Revolutions wait to spin
Every second, beneath your skin

Denials heard so dryly
In your crooked disposition

Social homeostasis
Is a distant dream here

Don’t deny,
don’t deny yourself

The semantics behind your sins
The darkness that this underpins

I sit here writing, scribing
Hoping for the false foundation
Of a bright future to rise
Of which these writings are imbibing
micropoems and scraps of writing from my twitter and tumblr

— The End —